


Broken Guns

by teromain



Category: Original Work
Genre: 1850s, Alternate History, Crimes & Criminals, M/M, Science Fiction, Steampunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-07 07:45:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 102,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teromain/pseuds/teromain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life for an outlaw is difficult at best in the Kingshore, Emmerich has been trying to prove himself a competent member of Allister's crew for years. But on the night he's given that chance, what begins as an ordinary job is anything but.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Prince and Rose

The mattress was hard and lumpy beneath his legs, and the single yellowed bulb in the ceiling cast bruised shadows over the floor. The room smelled of old, extinguished cigars and faded perfume, over an older, muskier scent of all of the bodies that had exerted themselves here. Emmerich shifted on the bed, wincing as a sprung metal coil dug into his thigh, and wondered why anyone would pay to lay with a woman in a bed like this.

He’d been here since late afternoon, in the shoddy second story room of The Prince and Rose, just waiting. The wallpaper was brown and faded, splotched with discolored flowers that might have once been roses themselves. Now they had wilted and smeared into pinkish splatters, swallowed up beneath water stains and age. The brass fixtures holding the gas lamps were tarnished, turned greasy and black with neglect. Under Order regulations, The Prince and Rose was a traveler’s inn with a public house on the ground floor—and only a traveler’s inn with a public house on the ground floor. But it was staffed almost entirely by busty women in somewhat immodest apparel, who would show you a room upstairs if you left a coin in the bottom of your empty glass.

Edwin Allister and the rest of his company were all down in the public house now. And Emmerich was in one of the private rooms upstairs. Without the company of a coin-bought woman, but with a certain kind of other companionship in the form of a large wooden trunk wedged beneath the creaking bed. It was part of a routine downmarket trade, the way Allister and Kegg had been doing their exchanges of guns, liquor, tobacco, exotic powders—anything the Order outlawed which was thus in high demand in the underground market—for years. This was simply the first time Emmerich had been allowed to be involved. Normally he stood about downstairs and watched the two men talk and laugh over mugs of ale for nearly a quarter-hour before getting down to business. He was never even allowed a pistol.

But he had one now, heavy in a holster at his belt, the leather so old that it had stiffened and cracked in places. It squeaked against his hip when he moved and smelled like stale dog piss. The pistol itself was a snub-nosed solid-frame revolver, the most expensive thing Emmerich was currently carrying on him. Keeping a gun, having the means to keep it cleaned and serviced and loaded, was a privilege not usually accessible to people like him. It belonged to Allister, and he’d used it before, as the man wanted all of his crew to be a capable shot, even if they weren’t always allowed to carry anything to shoot with. 

The high giggle of one of the women of the establishment floated through the door, coming along with a lower, rumbling voice of her current client. Emmerich could hear the worn wooden boards creaking out in the hall as they were trod on, and felt them move under his own boots. He shifted his feet, replanting them further apart, and leaned his elbows on his knees, hands dangling between. A door opened and banged closed next door, the room on the right now occupied. The faint sound of the woman’s laughter came through the wall. Bed springs creaked.

Emmerich sighed and stretched his neck. It would have been a good time for a cigarette, if he had still been able to afford the habit. His hands and mouth didn’t like to stay idle, they wanted to do things, if even something as simple as gripping and sucking on a piece of rolled paper and tobacco. Emmerich grinned to himself, trying not to let that imagery get too far. That was another habit he’d fallen out of practice with—Allister simply didn’t allow him enough free time for it. Brothels were fine when he had a spare moment and a spare coin, but finding what took care of his real wants was always much more difficult, and risky. 

There came new voices out on the landing. Two of them, both male. A gruff chest-deep rumble and a lighter, younger voice. Emmerich didn’t recognize either of them, and he rested his hand on the grip of his pistol. His body went still, and quite alert. They could just be passing by the room, or it could be Kegg’s men, or something else entirely. He’d take no chances.

When he heard a clunking at the door handle and the scrape of wood against wood, he drew the pistol from its holster, bracing the grip on top of his knee. The door shoved inward and Emmerich caught sight of a stocky man with copper-colored hair in the corridor. The other man was mostly a black shadow in the light from the gas lamps; smaller and slimmer than the first, braced across the doorway with his hand on the knob.

“ _Tsch_ ,” this shadowed man said, and flicked something round and dully metallic at the burly other. “Take your dreg money.” 

The ginger man laughed and gave the other an amicable clap on the shoulder, then moved off out of sight, back towards the stairwell. The swollen edges of the wood squeaked against the door frame as the first man pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped into the room. 

He wasn’t much of a man, Emmerich saw at once; young and slender and even almost pretty. But as soon as he saw Emmerich, and more specifically, Emmerich’s drawn pistol, the boy had a gun of his own out as fast as a blink. Emmerich wasn’t quite sure where it had even come from, since the boy was only wearing plain trousers and braces over a rough button-down with the sleeves rolled up. No belts or holsters or bags or anything else to hold a pistol.

“You’re Allister’s new man, then,” the boy said. His pistol, six-barreled and all bright metal and dark wood, was trained towards Emmerich’s stomach. His other hand moved out and shoved the door back closed. There was no lock, not uncommon in brothels.

“Reckon I am,” Emmerich replied. The boy had obviously expected to see Thomme or Uxilord here—the usual ones who took this part of the job. It would make sense for him to assume Emmerich was new entirely.  
“No need to be jumpy,” the boy said then. “I don’t bite.”

They shared a wary smile, and Emmerich let the barrel of his pistol drop. When the boy did the same, Emmerich shoved the pistol back into the holster at his hip. He probably shouldn’t have had it out in the first place, but nerves had gotten the better of him. In reciprocation, the boy’s gun disappeared just as fast as it had appeared, somewhere behind his back.

“So,” the boy said, moving into the room and along the right wall, passing in front of the drawn window curtains—also printed with roses, just as faded and drab as the wallpaper—“where is it?”

“Under the bed,” Emmerich said, rising to his feet. It was uncomfortable sitting on a bed with another man in the room. Especially a bed inside a brothel. And with the kinds of noises that were coming through the wall from the room next door. Emmerich brushed his hands off on his trousers, then hooked his right hand thumb through the belt loop closest to the holster. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with his other hand; he braced it on his hip after a moment.

Kegg’s boy had meanwhile dropped to one knee beside the bed and swept his head down, passing a glance under the duster. The trunk, Emmerich knew, was just a large hulking shadow beneath it, indefinable as anything worthwhile at all. It also barely fit in the space. He had watched Thomme and Uxilord wedge it under there an hour ago with some amusement. 

“Good,” the boy said, when he’d gotten to his feet again. He had tufty dark brown hair and a boyish face that still struck Emmerich as nearer to pretty than anything else, a long neck and a slim build and not much of a sense of toughness or nerve. But he was Kegg’s, and he had a draw that was faster than anyone Emmerich had ever seen, so he was worth something. His voice was clear and calm, marked by a Canalcourt accent—he was local, and by the state of his simple and worn clothes, faring in the world about the same as Emmerich was. Which was to say, not particularly well; despite the relative affluence of their respective employers.

Allister and Kegg dealt often, and they trusted each other, at least as far as two men constantly skirting on the edges of the law could. Kegg obviously trusted Allister enough that he hadn’t ordered his boy to check _inside_ the chest, to make sure that what was supposed to be inside actually was. Emmerich didn’t know what was in it, either. He was not quite a fully trusted man, not yet. This job would either make him one, or put him back to menial unappreciated work. Depending on how well Allister thought he did it.

At the end of this deal, Emmerich would walk out of this room, join Allister and his other men downstairs, and leave the chest in Kegg’s possession by way of this boy. A simple transfer of ownership, granted that Allister got whatever it was he wanted from Kegg. That part of the deal usually went smoothly enough. Keeping the goods out of the alert eyes of the clergy guard and other downmarket dealers—that was the difficult part. Kegg and Allister weren’t really guarding anything from each other, but from outsiders. That was why the chest was on the second story wedged under a bed with a whole barroom full of brigands between it and the only exit.

And the two men in this room.

Emmerich drew out the chair beside the bed, spun it so it faced the wall, and straddled it backwards, crossing his arms over the back. So he could keep an eye on the boy and the door both. Kegg’s boy continued around the walls, trailing his fingers over the mounted wooden shelves and the edges of the curling wallpaper, browning at the edges. He had a graceful way of moving, a walk that looked effortlessly casual, a way of tilting his head slightly that seemed elegant, rather than twitchy. As the boy walked the room, Emmerich saw where he kept his pistol—tucked unceremoniously into the back of his trousers, held in place by a loop of leather sewn to the waistband. It seemed an idiot place to keep it, but Emmerich kept his mouth shut about it.

By the time the boy had reached the wall opposite the door, Emmerich was finding the silence cloying and desperate. He hadn’t expected this as part of the job; he should have, but he hadn’t. They might be hours up in this room together, as Allister and Kegg talked and drank and generally spent ages getting down to business. Emmerich didn’t take to silences well, especially ones as obvious as this. He knew he oughtn’t get very friendly with Kegg’s man, but he also couldn’t spend hours on end just staring silently at him, either.

From across the room, the boy made a small sound of interest, and paused where he was. He was on the other side of the bed now, one hand splayed out at waist height along the wall, the other tracing carefully upwards towards the ceiling. 

“There’s a door here,” the boy said. “Interesting.” And Emmerich could see the lines of it now, just slight indents along the edges where the door and the frame met. With the lower hand, the boy peeled at the wallpaper, tearing a strip of it away.

The knob had been taken out, and now there was only an uneven hole beneath the paper where it had been. The boy dropped a long-fingered hand to the opening, dragging the tip of one finger into the space and pivoting it around. Emmerich had a strange moment of finding the motion arousing, while the mechanism inside the lock rattled and clicked. The boy bent down to peer into it, then glanced back at Emmerich.  
“Ah,” he said, with an unexpected grin. “We could look in on our amorous neighbors, if we like.”

Emmerich must have made a face, as the boy laughed and smoothed the curl of paper back into place. “No, I think not either,” he said. “Best leave it.”

“That door could open, though,” Emmerich said. “I don’t like that.”

The boy gave him a look, a lift of his eyebrows that clearly said he thought Emmerich was being rather unreasonable about a door that clearly hadn’t been used for decades. _Never sit with your back to a door or another man_ , Allister had told him, far more than once. That made three things in this room Emmerich couldn’t sit with his back towards, one of which kept moving around. He didn’t have enough sides of his body to cover all of that. 

“This is the one I care about,” the boy said, pointing with two fingers at the door he’d come in through. “You can watch that one, if it means so much to you.” He gestured to the papered-over one.  
Now Emmerich just felt foolish, but not enough so to forget about the second door. He was likely just being too particular about his first real try at a job, too anxious to not get anything wrong, but it didn’t mean that he couldn’t still do a little thing like wanting to keep his eyes on a door. He rose from his chair, brushed past the boy and went around the foot of the bed to the other side, and sat down facing the wall. He was now quite aware of the main door at his back, but that was what the boy was supposed to be for.

And after a moment, he heard a faint noise that might have been a laugh, and then the mattress dipped and something warm pressed up against his back. 

“There,” the boy said, his voice nearly in Emmerich’s ear. “Settled.”

The boy smelled of cloves and sweat, and—vaguely—of tobacco. The urge to have a smoke rose again, like a sleepy animal lifting its head in mild interest. It was reminding Emmerich of many other things it had been a while since he’d had. Like a strong body against his, lean muscle and hot skin under his hands. Emmerich didn’t want to think to keenly on it, but this boy fit well into the type of body he usually preferred.  
To make the entire thing even more strange and uncomfortable, their temporary neighbors in the room over were getting noisier. Muffled giggles and grunts came through the wall, metal springs creaking.

“So,” Emmerich said, if only to distract himself, and felt the boy shift against his back. “What’s your name?”

“Ezra,” came the reply, and, after a longer moment, “Lace.”

“Like—“

“Like on doilies and frilly bonnets, yes,” Ezra said, with a slight edge to his voice like he’d clarified this a hundred times before and was tired of it.

“I was going to say, like in a boot,” Emmerich said, and felt Ezra move against him again.

“I suppose Emmerich Mandelbrauss is much better?” he said after a moment, but his voice had evened and he sounded as though he might be smiling. 

“How did you know my name?” Emmerich said, startled. Moreso that Ezra had said it near perfectly. The last syllable of his first name often became soft and slushy in the mouths of those who didn’t speak the language. His surname often got entirely mangled. He felt the boy’s laugh as a rumble against his back.

“Heard it downstairs,” Ezra said. “They call you Emery, much?”

“Never.”

“What’ll you do to me if I do?” Ezra said, laughing again. Emmerich decided that he liked his laugh. He was used to the thick, chest-deep swarthy noises of men on merchant ships, or the tobacco and alcohol slurred chuckles of men like Allister and Kegg. Ezra’s laugh was light and open and real, completely incongruous with whorehouses and smugglers’ deals. 

“Not much,” he admitted.

“You’ve a Kaiserreich accent, as well as name,” Ezra said. Emmerich wasn’t surprised that the boy had picked that up as well—most couldn’t tell, and if they did it was only when he tripped over a w here or there. “You’re from there, then?”

“Yes,” Emmerich said. There was no harm in admitting it. “And you’re local.”

“Never left the ‘shore.”

“Should get out more,” Emmerich offered, hoping for another laugh and getting one. It went under his skin like a kind of warmth and stayed there, gently humming like the purr of a cat.  
“If I could afford to leave, would I be sitting back-to-back with someone like you, on top of a chest in the upstairs of a whorehouse?” Ezra shifted against him again, and Emmerich felt the slight jab of his shoulder blades. He thought the boy must have folded his arms.

“Someone like me,” Emmerich said.

“Like both of us. An outlaw. A… _Schnapphahn.”_

“So you know some Deute, do you,” Emmerich said, more impressed than he ought to be. After hearing the way Ezra had said his name, knew his accent, he wasn’t entirely surprised to hear the boy use some of the language. But it was still strange. His home tongue had been reduced to a Fifth District when the Orders laid their laws, hardly anyone out of those diocets spoke it now. He couldn’t guess at why a young boy from the Kingshore might.

“Had a—knew someone who did,” Ezra said, and then, carefully, “ _...da Ich lernte einige Dinge.”_

“ _Ihr Akzent ist schrecklich,”_ Emmerich told him, and Ezra laughed again.

“I imagine so,” he said. “It’s been some time.” 

Dreadful accent or not, Emmerich couldn’t deny that hearing the language spoken by someone else was a good comfort in this strange situation—even the best comfort he’d had in the last few years. He wanted to ask Ezra to say something else, see if he could carry on more of a conversation…but he really oughtn’t get sociable. 

Silence fell between them again, as if Ezra had thought of the same thing. Emmerich tried to move as little as possible; every time he did, he felt bone or muscle slide against him, a reminder of the boy’s presence at his back. If he stayed perfectly still, Ezra faded to just a flat press of warmth against him, most ignorable except for when either of them breathed.

Minutes ticked by. Emmerich rubbed his thumb back and forth over the worn metal inset in the grip of his borrowed pistol, warming it up as he kept watching the door. The pistol even had a name—the bulldog. When Allister had told Emmerich that he was ‘giving him the bulldog’, Emmerich had thought he was about to be mortally ended, or have some strange sexual maneuver performed on him. He knew that wasn’t unusual either, in associations of this type when people sometimes sold for more than objects.

Although, he probably wasn’t pretty enough for that type of business. Only the undiscerning might consider his face a useful commodity. His body was a bit better, made sturdy and strong from trawling on merchant ships and carting around the docks for years. But his more recent employment with Allister had him gone a bit softer, with less manual labor and more sitting around watching downmarket deals.

Even if Emmerich wasn’t much of anything, the boy he was sitting backs with was certainly more than something. Pretty to look at, but certainly with a masculine countenance and a good lean build. Emmerich hadn’t thought the latter at first, but sitting pressed up against half of the boy’s body had made him reevaluate. And Ezra had a different air about him, something—just like his laugh—that wasn’t fitting to this place, standing out like a coin in the gutter. He obviously knew this kind of work, knew how to play the games, but it was as though he’d dropped into it from somewhere else, a different and more beautiful world.  
Emmerich wondered if Kegg had noticed it, if that was maybe even the reason that Ezra was in his employ. The boy was distracting—could throw people off by his presence alone, just like he was doing to Emmerich now. A good ploy in a situation where concentration was needed. Luckily, Emmerich was only shut up in a room with him, made to watch a chest. Easy enough business.

“You’ve done this often, then,” Emmerich said then, finally unable to stand the heat of the taught silence any longer. 

“Fair few times,” Ezra said, as easily as if they’d been speaking all along. And then, “you?” 

“Not as many as that,” Emmerich replied. It had to be true, seeing as this was his first try at it. “Doesn’t get much easier, does it?”

“Certainly never gets any more exciting,” Ezra said, and Emmerich laughed. They both fell silent again, but now the quiet between them was charged, buzzing with possibility. Emmerich could almost feel how much they both wanted to talk to each other, like an excited crackle in the dry air.

“You don’t—“

“Do you think—“

They started to speak at the same time, cut themselves short, then both made awkward noises of consent.

“Go on,” said Ezra said, his voice riding along on top of a laugh.

“I was only going to say,” Emmerich said, carefully, “that you don’t seem the type. For this—line of work.”

Ezra was quiet for a moment, then made a soft humming noise in his throat. “I reckon I don’t,” he said. “But I’m not so terrible at it.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“No, no—I know.” Ezra took a deep breath that pushed Emmerich slightly forward. “I only meant that it’s strange that I _am_ good at this.”

“Why?”

Ezra laughed. “If we ever met again, I’ll tell you,” he said.

It was likely they would meet again. If Ezra was given this responsibility often, and if Emmerich did his job well enough tonight, they might end up meeting frequently. They might sit together again while deals went on below them, filling up silences with these snatches of conversation, reaching an odd sort of comfort with each other inside the walls of a brothel, a public house, a gambling establishment. Emmerich looked forward to it with an odd kind of longing, and this night hadn’t even yet ended. 

He passed a hand over his face, frowning at himself. This was not the way he should be thinking. He was losing focus; just the reason he’d known he shouldn’t speak to Ezra at all. It would be easy enough to bring his mind back to where it needed to be—all he had to do was shut himself up and hope Ezra followed that lead.

For a while, it was quite effective. Emmerich didn’t speak and Ezra, at his back, didn’t either. There was no clock in the room and Emmerich didn’t keep a timepiece, so he had no way of knowing how much time was passing. At a point, the man in the next room over snored for a while, before that stopped as well. Some time after, he and the women began to go at it again. Emmerich grumbled a little at the same time Ezra did, and then felt the boy laugh against his back.

From downstairs, suddenly, came two loud noises in a rapid succession—echoing claps of sound that ricocheted through the entire building. Unfamiliar as he was with the mechanics and handling of a pistol, Emmerich knew well how one sounded when fired. It also appeared to be a familiar noise to others, as well. The woman next door let out a shriek that had little to do with her current activity, and there was a man’s muffled and surprised cursing. There were heavy thuds on the floor, two pairs of footsteps scrambling from the room. All over the brothel, doors were flung open, voices carried into the hall and down the stairs, high and anxious and bewildered. Emmerich found himself on his feet, his hand at the grip of his pistol. He hadn’t been aware of standing up.

Then there was a third noise, a consequent _bang_ that was this time inside the tiny brothel room with them. The sound resounded off the walls, seemed to swell against them and press back in on Emmerich’s skull, his chest, ringing in his ears and stopping his breath. He whirled round, a haze of deafness clinging to him and reeling his sense of balance about, so that he nearly lost his footing standing in place.  
There was a smoking hole in the mattress, and Ezra was shakily fumbling his pistol into the back of trousers again.

“What the hell was that all about?” Emmerich hissed at him, heart pounding in his throat, bile strong in his gut. The smell of gunpowder was acrid and overwhelming in the air. The floorboards of the brothel were shaking beneath them, as women and their guests ran throughout the upper floors, no doubt spurred into more panic by the third, nearer, gunshot. The whole place was, to Emmerich’s dulled ears, in a distant and faraway uproar.

“Sorry,” Ezra muttered. He was pale and tight-mouthed and looked much younger suddenly, embarrassed at what had clearly been a helpless reaction. “Sorry, sorry.”

Emmerich saw the words form on his lips far more than he actually heard them. His hearing would clear up, he knew, but it was an inconvenience in a situation that he would have very much liked the use of all his senses. Likely Ezra was more inexperienced than Emmerich had thought, to react such. But it no longer mattered, as something had just occurred downstairs that was very likely nothing short of terrible. Gunshots were not a usual occurrence in a deal between Allister and Kegg. And only two of them; a startlingly low number if something had gone wrong, if their deal had been interrupted by a contending group of downmarket thieves.

“What just happened?” Emmerich said then, clutching at the worn grip of the bulldog. They glanced at each other, then both dropped to the floor on their opposite sides of the bed, pressing their ears against the warped wood. The Prince and Rose had been built sturdy and thick, and beyond the pounding of feet and errant shouting, Emmerich could hear nothing. He was still half-deaf anyway.

He got to his feet again, putting a hand to the bulldog at his hip. “I’ll go see,” he said to Ezra, who was still on the floor. “Stay here. We’re still on a job, remember.”

“I know,” Ezra said, sounding irate but looking fully involved. He climbed to his feet and gave Emmerich a nod.

Emmerich went out onto the landing. The brothel was in an uproar, half-dressed men and women fleeing up and down the stairs, tumbling dazedly out of doors, clutching at bedclothes and underthings. No one paid him much mind as he made his way down the stairs. He didn’t take his pistol out, but he kept his hand close to the holster, fingertips flickering on the leather. The first story was in a similar state as the second; Emmerich made his way down the last set of stairs to the ground floor, and the public house. He stopped halfway down, as soon as he could get a good look at the room without stumbling headlong into it.

Rose-hued gas lamps sat in dirty brass fixtures along the walls, casting the place in a reddish light. The theme in the upstairs rooms continued here with perhaps more subtlety—the walls and counter were of rosewood, and around the grubby windows were patterns of thorns. Several tables had been overturned and the place smelt of heady ale, bitter gunpowder, and a strange coppery tang. Men groped about in the smoke and gloom, some clutching at the serving women who stared around with frightened eyes. Some had stumbled downstairs half-naked, and had been caught before they reached the door. Clearly, no one was meant to leave. 

A tall, lanky man with a kink to his long nose was leaning over the counter in front, a pistol held casually at his hip. Maurice Clavel, what amounted to Allister’s right hand man. He was speaking with a neatly dressed man that Emmerich assumed must be the proprietor, and at his side stood the burly ginger that Emmerich had seen upstairs with Ezra. The ginger man was counting out a fair amount of coins onto the counter. Clearly some kind of bribe, or even a payoff. The proprietor looked rather unshaken despite the current state of his establishment.

Nearly out of range of what he could see of the room, Emmerich caught sight of a boot on the floor, encasing an unmoving foot and leg. He recognized the boot—had seen it and its partner nearly every day for the past several years. And now it was spread across the floorboards of a brothel’s public house with a dark splash of something spreading beneath it. And on the other side of the room, two men he recognized—one of Kegg’s, the other the ruddy-faced Thomme—were dragging something else heavy and unseen across the floor, behind the corner of the bar.

Piecing it together took only moments. Allister and Kegg had trusted each other, but forgotten about the men beneath them. Too worried about outside threats that they’d forgotten about the inside. Their own men had turned on them—a joint maneuver, a double mutiny, conspired by their own right hands working together. The two shots had been one for each of them.

Numb and light-headed, Emmerich crept back up the stairs, to the room on the second story and to Ezra.

“Allister and Kegg are dead,” he said upon entering, and Ezra only looked grim at the words. He’d been standing just inside the door, nearly out of sight, his pistol held close and ready at his side. “The right hands are running things, now. It’s something of a mess down there; I expect it’ll be at least a minute or two before it’s sorted, and they come up for—”

They locked eyes again. Then both looked towards the bed, and the chest that was wedged beneath it. 

“We ought to look,” Ezra said, shoving his pistol back into the loop in his trousers. “If nothing else, I want to know what I might be killed for.”

“It’s only fair,” Emmerich agreed, and together they started for the bed. Emmerich went to the foot of it, resting his weight against the molded iron frame.

“It’ll be easiest,” Emmerich said, “if I brace myself here, and lever it up enough for you to slide the trunk out.” Ezra nodded. “On my count.”

The frame creaked and groaned and budged up only slightly, but it was enough for Ezra to clamber beneath and emerge again, crawling backwards and heaving the trunk behind him. The metal corners screeched across the worn floorboards and Emmerich winced at the sound. His hearing was returned, thankfully.

“Locked, naturally,” Ezra said, drawing a hand up through his dark hair and glancing up from the chest.

“I can pick a lock,” Emmerich said, and Ezra raised a brow. “On occasion.”

“Try it, then. We haven’t much time.”

Ezra moved out of the way, and Emmerich dropped to a knee before the chest and slipped the small soft leather toolcase out of his boot. He kept it there always, never out of a thought of needing it but rather as a comfort, and protection. It was the only thing he had left out of his belongings that had come to the Kingshores with him. Everything else was sold or stolen.

The lock was a surprisingly simple one, and within half a minute Emmerich had it open. It had still felt like a very long half a minute, and the noises inside the brothel were quieting down around them. It hadn’t been very long at all since the first shots had rung out downstairs, but time inside the brothel was stretching out oddly around them, endless and abrupt all at once.

As soon as he heard the sound of the tumblers turn, Emmerich’s heart leapt to his throat, and he looked up at Ezra. He had his pistol out again and was watching the door warily. “Come on,” he said, gesturing the boy down beside him. “ _Zusammen.”_

Ezra knelt at his side, and together they pried their fingers beneath the heavy lid and pushed it up and back, the thick hinges squealing and the wood creaking.

Inside, piles of paper filled the chest to the brim. Not paper, Emmerich saw, but banknotes. He had only seen them once or twice before, and never handled one. It was the last thing he had expected to see—Allister and Kegg hardly ever exchanged representative wealth like this, as far as Emmerich knew. He’d thought the trunk held a half the share of powders that Allister had bartered cheap off a foreign merchant earlier that week. He’d heard the other men talking about it earlier, and just assumed. He’d known he’d never actually see inside the chest, and it wasn’t his job to worry about what was inside, only that it all got to where it was meant to.

“You couldn’t spend this in a lifetime,” Emmerich said, breathing out.

“Depends on your standard of living,” Ezra said briskly, and stood up again. He didn’t look at all awed by the piles of paper stacked up in the trunk, just mildly surprised. 

“Put it back under,” Emmerich said. Something in his stomach had gone cold and tight. “Put it back.”

“And do _what?_ ” Ezra said. “They’ll be up here any minute now, once they’ve got things controlled down there. It doesn’t matter what we do. They’ll kill both of us.”

“Then you think we should—what? Have a standoff, right here, in this tiny fucking room? They’ll come in shooting.”

“Then let’s take it,” Ezra said. “All of it—let’s take it. Take it and just leave with it.”

“ _Sind Sie verrückt?_ ” Emmerich demanded, forgetting himself for a moment. “ _Ich—_ "

“Probably, but why _not_?” Ezra said. “We either get out of this or we don’t; and if they find us we’ll die either way, if we stole their money or not. Emery—let’s _take it_.”

“You _are_ mad,” Emmerich said, and the grin Ezra gave in return was wild and bright.

“I might be,” he said. “But I know what I’m doing. If neither of us knew that this was happening, obviously we weren’t meant to know. And that means they see us as expendable, or as obstacles. Because we’re the ones in the room with the fucking chest! Why wouldn’t they let us know unless they just plan to off the both of us in the end?”

He was right, and Emmerich felt the pit of his stomach go over cold. It didn’t seem like a coincidence that the first time he was allowed a bigger part in a trade, something like this happened. The likelihood of all this made him sick at heart.

“Emmerich,” Ezra said, clear and quiet. Emmerich lifted his head, heart pounding, found Ezra looking quite calmly at him. “I need you for this. Together or not at all. What do you say?”

It took him only a moment to decide. It wasn’t that difficult, in the end. “All right,” Emmerich said. “All right. I’m with you. _Zusammen_.”

Ezra grinned, so widely that it put deep creases at the sides of his mouth. It was a handsome smile, disarming and unexpected. _“Zusammen,”_ he said. “So let’s find something to put this all in that isn’t a five stone trunk.”

“Pillowslip,” said Emmerich at once.

“Ungainly,” Ezra replied, but was already moving towards the bed, hands going out for one of the squashed, limp cushions propped up at the head. His hand dipped to his waist, and a small metal dagger suddenly glinted between his fingers. With one solid motion he stabbed the blade into the pillow and ripped the top edge open. Stuffing tumbled out the top, and Ezra turned the case upside down and emptied all of it onto the bed, spilling downy puffs everywhere. Then he threw the empty case at Emmerich, who snagged it from the air.

“Start on that,” Ezra said. “I’ll watch the door.”

As he passed by, Ezra’s hand slipped down, brushing along Emmerich’s waist, jostling something there. It took Emmerich a moment to realize that Ezra had slipped the bulldog out of his holster. Ezra had just taken his pistol, as casually as if he did it all the time. It had been familiar and careless—almost intimate. A shudder washed through him, one that only worsened when he caught sight of how Ezra looked hefting a pistol in each hand, elbows bent and barrels pointed at the ceiling.

“I’m not watching the door with only six shots, when there’s nearly twice as many downstairs,” Ezra said. Then he grinned, lifting his chin. “I’ll warn you next time I do that.”

_You needn't bother_ , Emmerich nearly said. He should have been upset by how easily Ezra had taken him off guard and outright stolen the pistol off him…but he was too busy being bothered in an entirely different way. He drew in a long breath as he knelt down in front of the chest and started dumping double handfuls of the notes into the pillowslip. It would have gone faster, and easier, with the both of them working at it, but Emmerich was glad that someone capable with a pistol was on lookout. 

Watching out for both of them.

When he risked a glance over at Ezra, the boy was pressed back against the wall by the door, which he’d pushed open a sliver. Just enough to see into the hallway and down the stairs that lead to the floor below. His eyes were trained forward, never moving, hardly blinking. His chest moved in quick, soft breaths, and the rest of his body was perfectly still. Emmerich was sure he’d never seen a person so focused.  
It took at least a minute to empty the trunk, and each second that passed only compounded the fear that the men below would be on the stairs at any moment, coming for them. Emmerich’s hands were sweating against the dry stacks of crisp paper, hardly aware of just how much wealth was passing beneath his hands. He had only four silver shales in his own pocket and had thought that a good share to keep him for the next week or two. He could not even conceive of how much he was stuffing into this threadbare sack of cloth.

“Done,” he said, when the last note was safely in the pillowslip and the trunk itself held only a few crumbs of old dirt at the bottom and threads of some long forgotten fabric. It looked much smaller now, empty and insignificant.

“Fortuitous timing,” Ezra said, pressing the door back closed and turning to him. “We’d best be leaving now—listen.”

Emmerich cocked his ear, but there was nothing. The panic in the brothel had died away like it had never been there. And that, he assumed, was Ezra’s point. With no other distractions, the men who had once worked under Allister and Kegg would be coming up to tidy up the last loose ends of their mutiny. 

Ezra crossed the room to the window then and threw back the curtains, then got one boot up on the edge of the sill. He kicked the frames open, twisted his body through the window and into the chilled night air. His hands gripped the bottom edge of the window and then disappeared, one at a time, as Ezra scaled himself down the face of the building. Inside the room was only silence. Drafty, damp air came in at the window and flickered at the lamps on the walls. Emmerich watched the faded rose-printed curtains waft inwards, and shuddered as the cold prickled up his bare arms. His coat, foolishly, had been left downstairs.  
“Emery!” came a call then from below, whispered and only a little frantic.

Emmerich was not quite ready for this part, nor was he sure he would ever be, so he made himself go to the window and lean out, resting the full pillowslip on the sill beside him. Ezra was standing on the cobbled street below, half his body bathed in the yellow light from one of the gas lamps. A moment later, he stepped fully into the shadows, invisible all except for a gleam of light off his dark hair.

“Drop it to me,” he called up in a whisper.

This was the telling moment. Emmerich drew in a breath, and dropped the pillowslip down into the dark. He heard the heavy _flumph_ of it landing in Ezra’s arms, and nothing else. Silence, and the hollow drip of the drainpipe. There was nothing left to do but to swing himself out of the window and begin climbing down.

The bricks were old and damp, sticking out like jumbled teeth, and he could hardly get enough purchase on them with the tips of his boots. He gripped at the windowsill with his hands, moved them down to the raised moldings running down the face of the building. Ezra was either down below, waiting in the dark with an armful of the possibility to change both of their lives—or he was gone, sucked into the shadows of the city and an insurmountably richer man for it. 

Emmerich’s boot slipped on a crumbling, loose brick. He grabbed at the wall, caught a niche, lost it, nails dragging against grout. He only had a few meters left to fall, but he fell hard, landing on his back, breath bursting out of him. His vision swooped grey at the corners, blurred, then danced with yellow and white spots as his head started to ache. The cobblestones were cold and hard beneath him and water from the gutter was running into the top of one of his boots. He wasn’t sure if he should move. And he didn’t see Ezra.

Then he heard footsteps near his head, the shift of fabric as someone knelt beside him, and a duller impact as something large and heavy dropped to the cobblestone beside his leg.

“Emery,” said Ezra’s voice. His face loomed oddly white and drawn out of the dark. He’d dropped the pillowslip at his side, and it had wilted over, sagging formlessly against his thigh. “You’re all right?”

“ _Es geht mir gut,_ ” Emmerich said, taking his outstretched hand. Ezra grinned and pulled them both up.

“ _Ich bin froh, das zu hören,_ ” he said, his voice warm and quiet. They were still clasping hands. The air between them seemed thicker, slower. Emmerich swallowed, and tugged his hand away. Ezra let his own arm drop, rubbing his palm absently against his leg. Then he reached down and grabbed the top of the pillowslip, and slung it up over his shoulder.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s go. Quickly.”

Above them, through the open window on the second story, there was the sound of a wooden door being shoved open in its swollen frame. A brief few seconds of silence, men’s voices shouting, heavy footsteps barging into the room they’d just climbed out of, wooden boards rumbling and shrieking against each other.

“Fuck,” Ezra said, turning wide eyes to him. And then, he grabbed Emmerich’s hand again, just as the distant bell of the city’s clock tower began to toll midnight. “ _Run.”_


	2. The Morning After

Putting fast distance between themselves and the Prince and Rose in the lamp-lit streets of Canalcourt was surprisingly easy. Ezra knew the city like a lover’s body, and he pulled them through twisting streets and tiny alleys, through doorways and side lanes that Emmerich might never had looked twice at. He tried not to focus on how warm and oddly strong Ezra’s hand felt in his, but instead on how that hand was the only thing left he had to rely on.

Allister had governed his life for the last five years, and now that supportive prison was gone. Just—gone. Allister was dead and the men that Emmerich had spent years with were likely trying to do the same to him. It hardly felt possible.

Perhaps ten minutes in all had passed since the first shots had rung out in the brothel, yet it felt like hours. When Ezra pulled them to a stop near a flickering lamppost to drop the pillowslip to the cobbles, lean over his knees and catch his breath, Emmerich could only slump wordlessly against the post and stare.

Ezra’s dark hair was tousled back off his forehead, his face flushed and sweating. His braces had both fallen off his shoulders and trailed as dark loops against his hips, and somehow a button of his shirt had come undone. He braced himself against the corner of the building and panted against the back of his wrist, clutching at the muscles below his ribs. Emmerich switched his gaze to the shoddy masonry of the building on the opposite corner while he got his own wind back, breathing carefully through the cramping pains in his sides. 

They had come to a broken part of the city, where the buildings were rotten and sway-backed, jumbles of wood and brick and plaster leaning into each other. The hour was late, and there was no one on this tiny crooked street but the two of them. The mud was thick on the ground, swallowing what excuse for paving there had once been. The gutter ran thick and vile. No gaslamps had been installed here, and the only light came from a few flickering candles lit inside dingy glass boxes, and the patched windows of some of the buildings. He was sure they hadn’t crossed the river, into the truly dangerous parts of the city that even Emmerich was loath to travel into, but they were certainly at the edges of the slums. Sevengate, likely, or the Borrows. 

A hand caught at his wrist, and Emmerich turned to meet Ezra’s frantic face, pinched and pale in the faint light.

“Are we all right?” Ezra said, for one moment looking only like a scared young boy, and nothing like the glint-eyed grinning thief who had looked at a chest full of dangerous money and said _I know what I’m doing._ “Tell me we’re all right, Emery.”

“We’re all right,” Emmerich said. And, to prove it, he reached out and clasped his hand over Ezra’s shoulder. Ezra’s hand jerked up and closed over his fingers, clutching hard. He was shaking. Emmerich took a step closer, until his arm was fully bent up between his chest and Ezra’s shoulder, the only thing keeping them apart.

_“Fehlt dir was?_ ” Emmerich said, quietly. Ezra nodded, leaning in towards him a bit.

“I’m all right,” he said. “I only—no, I’m fine.”

He drew in a breath and straightened up, and Emmerich let his hand fall off Ezra’s shoulder. Ezra dragged the sleeve of his shirt—both of which had come unrolled and now fell past his knuckles—across his forehead, and gave Emmerich a faint smile.

“It could have been a worse night,” Emmerich said then, and Ezra gaped at him.

“How _so?_ ”

“Well.” Emmerich reached over and thumbed one of the other boy’s fallen braces back into place, laying it smooth against his shoulder. “We could’ve disliked each other.”

“That’s the truth,” Ezra said, slipping the other brace back up at the same time. Emmerich bit down on his tongue, realizing the oddness of what he’d done only _now_ , after he had already done it. From the way Ezra was looking at him, he’d noticed it too  
.  
And then, Ezra reached out and tugged Emmerich’s rumpled collar firmly back into place, straightening it and finishing by giving Emmerich a light slap in the neck. Then he grinned, unexpectedly, and Emmerich pulled himself together fast enough to return it.

“We have to watch out for each other, now,” Ezra said, still smiling, but his eyes hard and serious. “We’ll never get out of this alive, if we don’t.”

“I know.” And Emmerich knew, fully and fool-heartedly, that he was already prepared to trust Ezra with his life. It was stupid, ridiculous—he knew nothing about this boy and his friendliness could be nothing but an act, calculated to gain trust and then exploit it.

But then again, Ezra could have already shot Emmerich three times over when he’d had both pistols, or taken the pillowslip and run into the night while Emmerich was climbing down a whorehouse wall, and he hadn’t done that either. He hadn’t given any reason yet for Emmerich not to trust him. So it was the only thing he could do. 

“So where do we go?” Emmerich said, aloud but mostly to himself.

“Well,” Ezra said. He was looking towards the corner end of the street, to a wattle-and-daub building with a sloping roof, a few of the thick-paned windows lit up by golden light. The creaking wooden sign hung over the door marked it as some sort of lodging, and a fairly run-down one at that.

“As good as anything,” Emmerich said, and Ezra nodded and grasped at the top of the pillowslip again. They crept across the filthy, stinking street until they were beneath the eaves of the inn, in the wash of thick, yellow light that came through the grimy glass windows. Ezra reached for the door at once, and Emmerich caught his elbow and held him back.

“We can’t both go in,” he said, and Ezra frowned at him.

“Why not?”

Emmerich lifted his eyebrows slightly, and made a small gesture between them. Reminding him that they were both male, one of them unusually young and striking, both of them still flushed and tousled from their run through the city, and carrying a bulging pillowslip. Asking for a single room together like this might rouse some suspicion, or at least remembrance of them by an innkeeper. And they ought to be keeping as unmemorable as possible.

“Oh,” Ezra said. He rubbed at one eye with the knuckle of his thumb and glanced away. “Right, of course. I’ll do it then.”

“I’ll stay here,” Emmerich said, putting one hand to the twisted top of the pillowslip.

Ezra looked at him for a moment, a hard gaze that Emmerich matched. Ezra had already shown that he was in this for all that it was and could be trusted, when Emmerich had dropped a fortune down to him in the dark. Now it was his turn to show that he was just as involved, just as reliable. He wanted Ezra to be able to trust him, just as much as he did Ezra already.

“All right,” Ezra said. He smoothed down his dark hair again, arranging it neatly over his forehead, and drew in a steady breath. Then he pulled open the door to the inn. Yellow light spilled out around his shoulders for a brief moment, gleaming across his hair, and then he disappeared inside. Emmerich twisted the cloth of the pillowslip tight around his fingers, leaned against the rough wall, and waited. After a moment or two he could hear mumbled, muted talk through the wall; Ezra’s, and a creakier and older male voice. Somebody laughed. There came the familiar sound of coins clinking against wood, and footsteps across old floorboards and up squeaking stairs.

Emmerich began to feel quite exposed standing there on the open street, gripping at a sack of stolen money and with the hazy glow of the windows illuminating him so nicely. He went around into the narrow space between the inn and the building beside it, their roof edges nearly touching above the alleyway. He was less noticeable here. It was past midnight and damp fog was beginning to creep round the gutters and corners, blotting out the road.

After several minutes’ time, Emmerich heard a creaking sound from somewhere high above him. He turned upwards, squinting into the dark. A window on the second floor had been pushed open, and a shadow leaned out of the unlit room and waved.

“Hey!” Ezra’s whispered voice floated down to him, echoing against the stones. “Can you climb up?”

Emmerich held up the pillowslip and shook it; _not with this._

“ _Scheiße_ ,” Ezra said. “Wait there.” He ducked back through the window, melting back into shadows.

Emmerich chuckled quietly; apparently he was rubbing off on Ezra too much already. His accent was still terrible, but the language complemented his voice. With practice, Emmerich was sure, he would nearly sound natural at it.

“Here!” A long whip-like object suddenly flew down from the window. Emmerich held his hand up, catching the tangling ends of Ezra’s braces around his arm. 

“Tie it up, then toss it here,” Ezra whispered down, and Emmerich knelt and did exactly that. The pillowslip was too full to close off the top in any satisfactory way, so instead he wrapped the braces around it like a parcel and tied it firmly off. 

It took several tries, and Ezra nearly toppled himself out of the window by leaning forward too far, but finally Emmerich managed to throw the pillowslip high enough for Ezra to snag it with his fingers, grab it, and pull it through the window. Emmerich was only glad the street was dark and most of the surrounding buildings had no lights on in the windows, and that no one was likely to see this astonishingly suspicious behavior.

“Your turn,” Ezra whispered down, appearing at the window again. “Can you make it?”

“I’ll find out,” Emmerich said, and reached for the wooden crossbeams.

Climbing up was quite a lot more difficult than climbing down. His belt and holster weighed him down and seemed to catch on every jutting edge of the building, and he wished he’d thought to toss those up to Ezra as well before trying. The rough walls didn’t give much purchase, but he could wedge the toes of his boots into the spaces where the wooden cross-beams met and push himself up that way. till, he was relying most on the strength of his grip and his arms, which were fortunately suitable for the task.

It was still a long climb, and by the time he reached the sill of the uppermost window he was sweating and straining with effort. Ezra caught his arms and pulled him in through the window, sending both of them staggering back against a wooden bed frame. The room was small enough that the length of the bed nearly stretched from wall to window. The ceiling sloped upwards from the window, thick with beams; an attic room.

“I’m finished climbing buildings for today,” Emmerich muttered, untangling himself from Ezra and steadying them both. Ezra just laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. Emmerich shut the window again, wedging the wooden frames into firm place. There was no latch, but the climb had been difficult enough that it was unlikely anyone would be coming in after them that way.

Emmerich turned back to the room. It was small, grubby, everything in greyish wood. There was a layer of grit on the floor, dusty heavy in the air. The smell of the street still lingered inside; not as strong, but just as foul. The ceiling swayed inwards in places where it wasn’t supported by beams. A half-melted candle in a fixture on the wall was the only light. Ezra was busy shoving a rough wooden lowboy in front of the door. It was the only other piece of furniture there beside the bed. The small, single bed.

Of course, Emmerich thought, trying to look anywhere in the room but at it. Ezra had been a single man requesting a room. A single man needed only a single bed. The pillowslip tied up with Ezra’s braces rested innocently in the center of it, the sides straining with the money they had just stolen.

Ezra seemed not to be bothered by the bed in the slightest. He was now moving around the walls, just as he had at the brothel, tracing his hands over them. Emmerich had thought it had just been a strange quirk when he’d seen him do it before—now he realized what it was. Familiarizing himself with the place. Checking for hidden things, like the door he’d found; peep-holes, panels, hidden features. It was smart, smarter than Emmerich had ever been. 

“There could still be men after us,” Emmerich said, and Ezra drew in a thin breath through his nose, pausing with his fingertips on the wall.

“There _are_ men after us,” he said. “Well, shifts for sleep then, I reckon. As there’s only one bed anyway.”

“Who goes first?” Emmerich said. He didn’t care much for admitting that he was unlikely to even last an hour; he was exhausted and shaking and his head ached. He doubted sleep would come easily, but the prospect of fighting it was an unhappy one. Ezra looked much the same, and seemed to become aware of it as they looked at each other.

“Well, fuck,” Ezra said, and the word in his refined voice even sounded strange and out of place. He pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing.

“Well,” Emmerich said. “We could,” he gestured, vaguely, at the single lumpy browned mattress on the wood frame. Ezra kept looking at him, a slight crease in his forehead. Puzzled, not understanding.

“We could—“ Emmerich said, hand-waving uselessly again and starting to feel perverse for even thinking the idea, let alone suggesting it. 

For the quickest second, a look that was something like pure terror flashed over Ezra’s face. But as soon as Emmerich blinked, the expression had changed into a wry, amused smile.

“Sleep back-to-back, you mean,” he said. 

“Neither of us is fit for much else right now,” Emmerich said. “There’s only one door, and there’s a lowboy in front of it. If anyone tries to get in by way of that window, we’ll hear them long before. We should be safe enough.”

Ezra kept looking at him for a long, fairly uneasy moment. Then he said, “All right.”

“All right,” Emmerich said in turn. Still, the feeling between them was uncomfortable and tense. Emmerich was about to take the suggestion back and volunteer for first watch and a few uncomfortable hours of forced vigilance, when Ezra dropped down on the edge of the bed and began to take his boots off. The mattress huffed dust into the air and Ezra coughed, waving a hand in front of his face. Looking at it, Emmerich almost would have preferred the stained and sprung bed back at the brothel.

He also wasn’t sure how undressed Ezra was going to get, and even if they were to be sleeping in the same bed he felt he shouldn’t be watching quite so intently. He turned his back to Ezra and began unbuckling his holster and belt. It made him think back, to the beginning of the night, when he’d drawn his pistol on Ezra simply because he was nervous, been insistent on watching a papered-over section of wall that would clearly never be a threat.

“I can’t believe I was so worried about a _door,_ ” he muttered, and at his back, Ezra laughed. And then kept laughing, a breathless and helpless sound that was nothing like Emmerich had heard from him yet. When he turned, Ezra had pressed the heels of his hands to his face and was shaking with mirth. Emmerich found there was nothing to do but join him.

He hadn’t laughed in what seemed like ages, and it felt good. Loosened something that had been tight and rusted in his chest, relieved pressure that let him breathe again. He wasn’t even sure what they were laughing about—the door, the entire night itself, but they both understood it in an unspoken implicit way.

When Emmerich then sat down on the bed beside Ezra to remove his own boots, things felt far less strained between them. Ezra’s shoulder was warm against his and the boy still smelled like spice and tobacco, now hidden under the lingering scent of gunpowder and the rotten air of the rookeries.

“So you said,” Ezra spoke then, “at the brothel, that the right hands were running things now. I suppose you meant Staard and Clavel, then.”

“Clavel, yes. I don’t know Staard,” Emmerich said. “Was he the man that was with you—the ginger?” 

Ezra nodded. “Johan Staard,” he said. “He was to Kegg what Clavel was to Allister. Second to everything.”

“It was him and Clavel I saw downstairs, in the middle of it all. Whatever they have planned, it’s their doing.”

“Not so surprising,” Ezra said. “Only that they seemed to have planned it together.”

“And that all the others knew of it, but us.”

They caught gazes, and simply looked at each other until Emmerich cleared his throat and leaned away and then rose to his feet, reaching to his belt to unbuckle the holster and heavy pistol from his waist. From the corner of his eye he watched Ezra catch at the pillowslip of stolen money and drag it off the edge of the bed, then push it beneath the frame with the heel of his foot. Then he stretched himself out on the far side of the bed, facing the wall. Emmerich left his holster on lowboy in front of the door, but kept the bulldog with him. Ezra still had his own pistol with him in the bed as well, up near the pillow.  
Emmerich took a breath, closed his eyes and set his shoulders. Then he pinched out the candle on the wall and crept back to the bed in the dark.

He had learned—trained himself really, over seven years—to sleep lightly. So lightly that sometimes the sounds of his own breathing could wake him. He trusted his own reflexes, the natural instincts of his body to come awake if anything happened around him. And the bulldog lay, barrel pointed door-wards, just by his hand. If the door or windows so much as creaked in their frames, his body would be up and ready before his mind was fully awake.

Ezra wasn’t quite pressed against him in the bed; there was room enough to avoid that with both of them lying on their sides, but Emmerich could feel the heat from the boy’s body taunting at him. It had just been so long since Emmerich had been this intimately near to anyone, and he was sure that was the cause of most of this. To Ezra, he was only here as the other man caught in an accident of betrayal, fate shackling them together. Emmerich had to get control of himself, because he could kill them both if he wasn’t focused, if he allowed Ezra to distract him. They weren’t out of this yet.

Sleep was a long time in coming.

#

Emmerich woke up into dusty morning sunlight and the bitter, hard smell of tobacco. He hadn’t had a smoke in months, Allister’s pay wasn’t enough to cover such personal amenities. He’d as good as quit because of it, but the old familiar smell alone was enough to drag him, tauntingly, to the edge of waking. And what he saw over the end of the bed was enough to drive him hard into full consciousness.

Ezra was sitting in the window ledge, one leg drawn up and the other stretched out at a long, lean angle. His hair was rumpled and raked to one side, his oversized shirt entirely unbuttoned in front, the sleeves rolled up. Light came in through the slats in the shutters behind him. He held a thinly rolled cigarette between his thumb and middle finger, the smoke and morning sunlight hazing around his sharp profile in a golden glow. 

Emmerich felt his breath catch and stutter in his throat for a reason other than the cloying smoke, and a raging heat churned through him. The boy was beautiful, and he wasn’t even _trying_. It was hardly fair. If they were going to be relying on each other from now on, they were going to have to lay some ground rules for proper behavior. Such as Ezra needing to stay fully dressed at all times. And never, ever smoking, because as the boy lifted the cigarette to bow-shaped lips and gently sucked just _so_ , Emmerich had to grip his hands into the mattress and swallow down a small, helpless groan.  
He wasn’t as successful as he’d thought, as Ezra shook himself a little and glanced at him.

“ _Morgen_ ,” he said, giving Emmerich a half-wave with the cigarette, dragging a trail of gleaming white smoke through the air. “We seem to still be alive.”

“We do,” Emmerich said, trying not to sound as strangled as he felt. Ezra stood up off the window ledge, the open front of his shirt falling straight around his narrow waist. He had a thin trail of dark hair leading up from below the waistline of his trousers to his navel, and Emmerich was not looking at it. Not at all. Nor was he looking at the lean line of muscle at Ezra’s chest, or the way a falling path of light dipped along his collarbone and throat, or the round pink edge of one of his nipples, showing just under the edge of the shirt.

Whether he felt Emmerich’s eyes on him or the movement was a coincidence, Ezra suddenly closed his shirt up at the throat and did up most of the buttons. Emmerich didn’t allow himself to look away, instead holding Ezra’s gaze as though he had every right to watch him dress or undress. And he did, if Ezra was going to do it right in front of him. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or not, but Ezra’s face looked pinker under the floating motes in the hazy light.

Ezra also became very fascinated by the window shutters while Emmerich used the chamber pot beneath the bed. The smell of his cigarette was everywhere in the room now and there was a drawing in Emmerich’s throat, that same desire that had been slowly awakening itself since the night before. There were too many things that this boy had, which Emmerich couldn’t take.

When he was done, he sat down on the edge of the bed and Ezra came to sit near him. The streets of the rookery were waking up around them, and from all around Emmerich could hear noises of the slums, clanging and hollering and squalling below, shouts of children and men and women. Leaving here, unnoticed, with a large sack of money was going to be much more difficult than it had been the night prior. And they ought to leave soon, Emmerich thought distantly, watching Ezra lift the cigarette to his mouth again.

“You had that tobacco on you yesterday?” he asked, and Ezra laughed and shook his head.

“Got it off the proprietor when I arranged for the room,” he said. “Thought I might have need of it.”

“May I—?” Emmerich asked, swallowing against the words sticking in his throat. He gestured instead, and Ezra amiably passed him a small sack of tobacco and rolling paper from his pocket. With shaking hands, Emmerich managed to get one done well enough on his third attempt.

Ezra was watching him, a smile teasing at the edge of his mouth. “Out of practice?”

“You could say,” Emmerich said. His mouth was so dry that he could barely wet the paper, and had to try several times at it.

When Ezra leaned close, striking a match for him and holding it near, Emmerich took the brief moment to study his face in profile. The boy wasn’t even old enough to grow a proper beard—there were only a few sparse hairs on his upper lip and the edges of his jaw. His eyes were lighter than Emmerich had thought, blue or even grey in the light, large for his face.

Emmerich leaned away again, and took a moment to savor the feeling of the bitter smoke coiling deep into his body. They sat in silence for a while, Ezra teasing at the shrinking end of his own cigarette and both of them consumed in their own their own thoughts.

“We ought to think about what to do now,” Emmerich said eventually, and Ezra pulled a hand through his hair.

“Honestly, my plan stopped at surviving the night,” he said, then offered Emmerich one of his wide, boyish grins. “But if you’ve suggestions, I’m all for hearing them.”

Emmerich leaned forward over his knees, clasping his hands together and knocking them against his chin. “We’ve got a small fortune in that pillowslip and we can’t just stroll through the city with it like that,” he said, after a moment. “And we can bet Staard and Clavel won’t just let us go with it.”

“And we don’t know if they’re working together now or if they separated after they...after it was done,” Ezra said, scratching at the back of his neck. He took his hand away and looked at it, then dug his fingers back into his hair. “They’d not have expected the money to run away on them. They might have to work together now.”

 _The same way we do_. “Because nobody in their right mind climbs out a second-story window with a pillowslip full of already stolen money,” Emmerich said. “Until we know better, we assume they’re working together.”

“Right,” Ezra said, with a nod. “That means any people they deal with regularly are out—we can’t go to them.”

“That’s most everyone in the damned city,” Emmerich said, and Ezra bared his teeth a little.

“There has to be someone,” he said. “Give me a little time, I’ll think of one. I’m afraid I’m still…reeling a bit, right now.”

“I know,” Emmerich said. When he dropped his hand, it somehow landed on Ezra’s knee. “It doesn’t…seem that it happened.”

“We’ve a pillowslip full of money to prove that it did,” Ezra said with a laugh that sounded only partly forced. He didn’t seem to mind Emmerich’s hand on his leg at all. “Speaking of, I think we ought to look at it. Didn’t get much of a chance last night. We don’t even know if it’s true or counterfeit.”

“For Kegg and Allister to be killed over it, I only assumed it was true,” Emmerich said. He also didn’t know how to tell a falsely printed banknote from a real one, himself. He assumed Ezra must.

Ezra had put the pillowslip beneath the bed the night before, and now he got to his knees to retrieve it, tossing the sack up onto the bed beside Emmerich. It was still tied up with Ezra’s braces and Emmerich had done a fair job with his knots the night before, as it took both of them picking at them to loosen it. Some part of Emmerich wanted to see the pillowslip upturned and all the banknotes poured out across the bed, if only to see how real it was, but Ezra only reached into the top and drew out a single stack of banded-together notes. Almost disappointing.

Ezra passed a few of the notes to Emmerich and then spent a few minutes peering closely at the ones he held, running his fingers along the surface and edges and seeming to look for things in particular. Emmerich squinted at the ones in his hand, but the only thing he could tell from them was that he held the equivalent of ten currens, more than he had ever seen or touched in his entire life.

“They look true enough to me,” Ezra said at least, and Emmerich nodded vaguely and made no conclusive agreement. Ezra stuffed the banknotes back in the pillowslip and stood, dragging his nails along his hairline and above his ear. “I _swear_ ,” he said then, and itched more vigorously at the back of his hair, “if I got another damn fleet of insects nesting on me again from this hovel, I’ll—“

“You’ll _what_?” Emmerich said, and laughed. 

“Speak with the management,” Ezra said. He gave his neck another swipe with his nails, then gave Emmerich a crooked smile. “I oughtn’t complain. I’m not dead, at least,” he said. “And I’ve got you.”

“Right,” Emmerich said, as his whole stomach started a slow, contented burn. No one had ever considered him a true asset before, and as pleased as that made him, it was now also a responsibility he needed to uphold. He had a strong desire to not disappoint Ezra. It would eventually happen, but he would delay the moment as long as he could.

He watched the boy cross the room to the door and begin to shove the lowboy away from it. Only one reason for doing that, and they hadn’t even discussed leaving yet.

“Where are you going?” said Emmerich.

“To find a washroom, or at the very least a pump,” Ezra said. “I itch nearly everywhere.”

“Right,” Emmerich said, and Ezra hesitated only a moment before throwing the bolt back and going out the door. He dragged it shut behind him and when it closed completely, Emmerich dropped his face to his hands and cradled his head, breathing out. It would be all right, he told himself, twisting his fingers into his hair. Eventually, all of it would be all right. This thing with the money, with Allister and Kegg, with _Ezra_ —it would all have to work out. One way or another.

It seemed like barely a minute had passed before he heard footsteps and fumbling outside the room. Then Ezra stumbled back inside, swung the door shut, threw the bolt, scooped Emmerich’s holster and belt off the lowboy and threw it at him.

“We’ve got to leave,” he said, as Emmerich lurched upwards and caught the leather holder against his chest. “Right now.”

“Ezra, what—“

“Men downstairs. I don’t recognize them, but they’re clearly asking about us. Even if that innkeeper tells them that _one_ young man came here very late last night, they’ll be up here, and fast.”  
“God,” Emmerich said heavily, but already fixing the belt around his waist. “How did they find us already?”

“It’s not as though there was anything subtle about last night,” Ezra said. “I’m sure it’s already gone through the downmarket that we stole the money—there’s likely a price on our heads for it. Any number of people could have seen us running in this direction, they’ve probably tried all the inns they could find.”

“I reckon we’ll go out the same way I came in,” said Emmerich, and Ezra threw him a grin. 

“More or less,” he said, and went across the floor to the window. He tugged at the wooden shutters until they sprang open. A belch of cold, rotten air came in along with the clamor of the streets below.  
Ezra climbed onto the sill and stood up outside the window, so that he was only visible from the thighs down. Emmerich thought he ought to grab onto him somehow, hold him steady—there was a long drop below him, after all—but before he could try, Ezra’s legs kicked upwards and clambered over the top of the window. Emmerich grabbed the sill and leaned out himself, twisting round in time to see the last of Ezra’s boots disappearing over the roof edge.

“Ezra!” he hissed, and after some scuffling and creaking of wood, Ezra’s face leaned back over the eaves. 

“What are you do—“ Emmerich started, but Ezra rode over him.

“The bag!” he said, and stuck an arm down. “Quick!”

Emmerich had nearly forgotten it, somehow, even though it was the entire reason they were here at all. But as he started after it he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, heading up.

“ _Scheiße_ ,” he muttered, and went across to the lowboy instead, throwing his hip against it and shoving it back in front of the door. The footsteps were somewhere around the first story by now and, Emmerich thought, gaining speed. The whole building shook under the assault.

Emmerich dove to one knee beside the bed frame, made a hasty knot back into Ezra’s braces around the pillowslip, and grabbed it up into his arms. His pistol was still on the bed, half beneath the blanket. He snatched it as he staggered to his feet, forcing it back into the holster at his side.

Something pounded against the other side of the door. The latch rattled, hard. Then there was a clicking of keys, and the bolt turned in the lock. Emmerich stumbled back, clutching the pillowslip.

“Emmerich!” Ezra’s voice came through the window, a desperate little whisper. “Come on!”

Emmerich lurched over to the window, the door rattling back and forth between the frame and the back of the lowboy, its wooden feet shrieking against the floor as they were shoved, bit by bit, away from the door. Ezra grabbed the pillowslip as soon as Emmerich hoisted it up, and dragged it upwards out of sight. Then his hand shot down again. Emmerich caught Ezra’s arm and was half-lifted out of the window, catching and pushing himself off any surface he could touch.

Once they were together on the sloping roof, they crouched silently, not daring to move or breathe as the lowboy was finally shoved away from the door and several pairs of footsteps tumbled into the room beneath them. They were forced to brace their weight on the crossbeams, which could creak and groan beneath them at any moment and fully give them away. They could hear mumbled voices below, male, but not loud or clear enough to pick out words. From the sound of them, they were not pleased to discover the room empty.

Neither Ezra or Emmerich had a coat, and they huddled near to each other, touching shoulders, long after the voices and footsteps had left the room beneath them. Emmerich even got his arm up around Ezra’s back without feeling too forward. Ezra had only pressed closer to him, his face hidden in his folded arms. Whoever the men where, no one had thought to look upwards for them. For the moment, they were safe.  
Above them, the day was already darkening, the brief morning sunshine giving way to petulant clouds and a chill wind. Dark hulls of missionary ships sailed far above their heads, the flare of their fuel ballasts gleaming through the low clouds. Emmerich watched them cut across the grey sky with a sense of nostalgic speculating. He had considered for a while, back when he had still lived with his family in Kaiserreich, about taking the Order tests, becoming part of a missionary crew. But he had none of the required talents, and heights didn’t agree with him. Still, sometimes, he wondered. What would be now, if he had.

Eventually, without words, he and Ezra drew apart from each other and got to their feet. Emmerich reached for the pillowslip this time, as Ezra had been the one carrying it all of the night before. They caught eyes for a moment, before Ezra gave him a wary smile and turned to climb up towards the center of the roof. Apparently, this was to be their departing path of travel.

They snuck away over rooftops, climbing along crooked chimneys and picking their way across crumbling eves until they were many streets away from the inn, out of the rookery and deeper into the city proper again, and feeling only just a bit safer for it. Below them the streets were crowded with more and more people, voices and sounds and smells carrying clearly up to them as they picked along the wind-swept roofs. Carriages clattered along the cobblestones, some horse-drawn and others puttering along on their own, puffing fat clouds of steam and jolting on their rickety frames. Jerry-carts, Emmerich thought was the term, hesitant little contraptions that were rather new in the city. He more often saw them broken down along curbsides than moving.

Looking down at the city from the rooftops was a new and strange perspective for him. Most of the time he felt lost here, trampled and swallowed up beneath the thousands of people who had no reason to look twice at a poor immigrant boy and wouldn’t care if they came upon him dying in a gutter. Even thieves and outlaws saw themselves as more than him. Despite having lived here for nearly ten years, he was still seen as an outsider to most everyone. But here on the rooftops all of that seemed less important, and he felt a strange peace at Ezra’s side.

They were on the roofs above the busy avenue of Tourneyfair Street before they climbed down again, using a wide oven chimney and an empty clothesline that had been strung across an alley. Three streets to the south was Little Faire, the poor district in which Emmerich rented a small musty room above a chemist’s shop for three copper pegs a week. He had a few belongings there still, but knew it would be unwise to go back, now or ever.

“Emery, what are you looking at?” Ezra said near his ear, and Emmerich realized he’d been staring out of the mouth of the alley and clenching the end of the clothesline hard in one fist. 

“I lived down that way,” he said, pointing, and Ezra put a hand to his shoulder.

“You’re not thinking—“

“No, of course not. What’s to go back there for? Clothing, a few trinkets. It’s nothing I need.”

Ezra squeezed his shoulder. The sky was low and dark above them, pressing down upon the whole of the city. Cold wind whistled through the alley around them and whipped their meager clothes against their bodies, and Ezra shivered and stepped closer.

“So. Where to now?” Emmerich said, and Ezra made a sound in his throat.

“I was only thinking of getting far from where we were,” he said. “Were you having a more precise idea?”

“I was thinking of the last place they’ll ever look for us,” Emmerich said, and a slow smile crept across Ezra’s face.

“All right,” he said.

#

Half a toll later they were back on the same street that housed the Prince and Rose, now conspicuously closed down, its windows darkened and a sign hung out front that simply read ‘Not Today’. Ezra had once again led them through side-streets, back alleys, ways through the city’s outskirts and edges that Emmerich had never known. But Ezra had never left the ‘shores, maybe even never left this city, and Emmerich was only appreciative of his familiarity with it.

They took shelter in the dark corner of a different public house down the row, the wealth of stolen money now in two large leather satchels wedged down between their feet. They had bought the bags on two separate streets at two separate times, along with a pair of coats that kept off the rain that had finally begun to fall. The streets outside were slick with water, muddy puddles cutting between cobblestones, a grey mist rising from the ground. Men and women dashed about in the streets, running between eves and alleyways to wait out the downpour.

Both Emmerich and Ezra had a pint before them and a game pie. It was possibly the best meal Emmerich had had in weeks. Ezra had paid, as he had paid for the room and the tobacco and the two satchels. He was not using the stolen banknotes, all of it was coming from his own pocket. Emmerich didn’t want to inquire as to how much money Ezra had in all, but already it was twice the amount of what Emmerich had in his own possession. 

They spoke few words to each other, yet the silence between them was not unfriendly. Emmerich was keeping his ears open to any talk around them of trades gone badly, of betrayers and mutineers, or of stolen money, but there was none. A few mentions of the peculiar closing of the Prince and Rose, but none of these men seemed the downmarket type—most had ducked into the tavern to wait out the rain. At the table beside him, Ezra seemed to be listening for the same sort of thing.

When the rain let up and they had been dawdling at their table for quite some time and making their presence far too lasting, they slipped back on to the rain-washed streets and moved on. The Prince and Rose sat near squarely in the center of Pennygrand, and by another unspoken agreement Emmerich and Ezra did not stray from that part of the city. The search for them would likely be spreading outwards with the brothel as a center, especially now that they had doubled back from the rockeries, their trail would not be easily followed.

Pennygrand was a union of all types, grown up between where the slums, the poor districts and the middling districts converged, bordering on all of them and catering to an entire mix of the inhabitants of the city. It changed fluidly from street to street; thieves and beggars roamed only blocks over from respectable shops and the slightly more affluent society of Canalcourt. Emmerich and Ezra clung to the areas further from the rookeries and poor districts—the occasional constable patrolled this area, yet Emmerich would have rather seen one of their cross-marked helmets than a man from the downmarket who might recognize them.

They had stayed off the main streets, ducking into shops when they could and spending as little time in one spot as possible. The heavy satchels at their sides felt like a waving banner to what they were carrying, but no one passing them ever spared them a second glance. There was one moment when Ezra had wheeled them suddenly around a corner, yanked Emmerich to the wall and pressed them close together in the shadows. Standing like that, Emmerich had felt Ezra’s heart pounding against his and he had stayed as still as he could, hardly breathing. Ezra had been peering hard at the passersby in the street, hands twisted in Emmerich’s coat, until he had suddenly stepped away again.

“I thought I saw—” he’d said, his chest still rising and falling with rapid breaths. “Sorry. It wasn’t. I’m sorry for—I’m sorry.”

“Better careful than caught,” Emmerich had told him, and Ezra had only looked embarrassed and hadn’t allowed Emmerich to catch his eye for at least an hour afterwards.

Nightfall found them in another public house and inn near to the edge of Little Faire again. Despite the cautions they had taken all day, beyond the close escape that morning there had been nothing that had even hinted they were being pursued. The day had been so uneventful as to become almost suspicious, as if what was coming for them was only biding its time.

They rented a room again for the night—Ezra had gone and done it, the money coming from his pocket, before Emmerich could do anything to the contrary—and they naturally found themselves in another small cramped room with only one tiny bed.

This time, Ezra only laughed to see it. “We are going to be familiar with each other by the time we’re through this adventure,” he said, stripping comfortably out of his coat and tossing it upon a hanger on the wall.  
Emmerich laughed as well, and pushed aside all the heated thoughts that instantly came to him about how he could become familiar with Ezra. And he had been doing so well until now; gone nearly all day without his mind taking such fantasies. Still, he had survived one night with no mishap, and surely a second wouldn’t be that much more difficult.

#

“I’ve thought of someone,” Ezra said the next morning, as he and Emmerich dressed and rolled the last bit of tobacco between them. “He wasn’t one of Kegg’s men; didn’t really deal with him. Maybe he can help us.”

“You trust him?” 

“He has no loyalty to anyone in the downmarket, he only has assets that Kegg would pay to use. I think it’s worth seeing about.”

“All right,” Emmerich said. He had no ideas himself and was hard-pressed to come up with any to counter this one. Ezra was far from a fool, and if there was one of them that wouldn’t get them killed it was likely to be him.

They set off as quick as they could manage, quitting the inn and Pennygrand entirely, heading south towards the river. Ezra’s idea was leading them towards the edge of the industry districts, where buildings became square and stout and solid, built of hearty brick. There were factories here, canneries and foundries and cotton mills and potteries, clustering together in wide blocks before the river. Gritty blackish smoke from chimneys hung above the roofs here instead of the grey wisps of hearth fires and cooking ovens. The taste of the briny water was on the wind, and beyond the great distant shapes of the slipways were the masts of ships, the ones that were still built for the water and not the air. The smell was not as bad here as the slums, but there was a texture to the air that made his eyes burn and his skin itch. Emmerich thought they must be in Bottleplate or Gaskets End, but with all of the backstreets Ezra followed it was hard to know precisely.

Finally Ezra turned them down an alley and brought them down steps to a door set below the street level. It was locked, and there was no answer to their knocks, so Emmerich got out his tool kit from his boot again and set to work. Within minutes they were climbing up wooden stairs in a narrow corridor towards a door above. It was strangely silent here, when Emmerich had expected they would be coming into the noise and clamor of some type of factory. 

They came through the door into a large cluttered floor of machinery and paper. Rows and rows of large metalworks lined the long workroom floor. Tall windows lined the walls of the warehouse floor, papered over with brown panes to cull the amount of light coming in. There were several long table of rough wood under the windows, holding all manner of objects Emmerich didn’t recognize. The room was silent, empty, only dull light seeping through the windows and playing over the silent machines.

“A printing house?” said Emmerich, and Ezra lifted one shoulder.

“It’s quite legal,” he said. “The owner is on the level, mostly. He knows me, as well—at least, he did a year ago. Though I’m not sure—“ Ezra glanced around the empty floor, frowning. “There’s no one here.”  
“Well,” Emmerich said, as Ezra began walking slowly forward down the aisle made between the tables and the machines. “It’s—“

“Luca!” Ezra suddenly shouted down the length of the workroom, and Emmerich winced at the sound echoing through the machinery. “Luca _Carvone_!”

“ _Mein Gott_ , Ezra, _bitte_ ,” Emmerich muttered, grabbing the boy’s wrist. “ _Sei leise!”_

A door opened and slammed shut from somewhere deep in the workroom, and Ezra took a step forward, shaking Emmerich’s hand from him. Footsteps were moving deep within the printers, coming towards them, and Ezra was going ahead to meet them without even seeing who it was. It was all Emmerich could do to not grab him back. But the figure that finally stepped out from between the machines didn’t look all that dangerous.

Luca Carvone was a tall, warm-skinned man with dark waves of hair pulled together at the back of his neck with a bit of cloth. He was not overly young, but neither was he aged; no more than twoscore years at a guess. Emmerich had never seen him before, never heard his name, and wasn’t exactly sure how he could be of help. Or if he could be trusted. 

But he greeted Ezra like a brother, drawing him into a warm embrace when they reached each other and kissing his cheeks. Emmerich wasn’t sure if what he saw on Ezra’s face was a blush or not, and it was gone by the time the two men pulled apart.

“ _Anche per me è bello rivederti,_ ” Ezra muttered, in a language Emmerich didn’t know. Luca said something longer and quicker back—presumably in the same—and slung his arm around Ezra’s shoulders, tucking the boy close against his side. The flush in Ezra’s face was unmistakable now. 

“Why aren’t the printers running, Luca?” he said, gesturing to the silent and unmanned machines.

“Ezra, _amico mio_ , it is Sunday,” said Luca. “Only the churches and whores are open today.”

Ezra went even pinker at the words, though Emmerich himself laughed. That seemed to call Luca’s attention to him for the first time, and he tilted his head in a questionable fashion, jostling Ezra beneath his arm.  
“And who is your friend here?” he asked. “Another of Kegg’s?”

“Ah,” Ezra said, stepping away from the man’s side, towards the windows. “Actually, Luca, that’s the reason we’ve come. There’s—“ 

It was only a stroke of luck that allowed Emmerich to turn at the very moment that Luca drew something off of a platform of one of the printing machines, and see the gleam of light off of a metal edge. He was too far away to do anything but cry out.

_“Ezra!”_

The word had barely left his mouth before Ezra was already twisting to the side, pivoting right and bringing his arm up. There was a small blade in his hand— Emmerich again hadn’t seen where it had come from, let alone remembered Ezra had it at all—and it clashed and ground against the edge of Carvone’s knife.

“Luca!” Ezra shouted, throwing the man’s arm back and staggering away. “Have you fucking lost it?”

But Luca only recovered his balance and swung again, and by this time Emmerich found himself racing down the length of the workroom towards them, throwing the satchel off his shoulder and to the side. He was too slow and too bad an aim with his pistol to trust it would do him any good, but he reached beneath his coat to his holster as he ran. Ezra seemed to be holding his own, but mostly in ducking and twisting out of the reach of Luca’s much larger knife.

Emmerich didn’t have the agile physical ability that Ezra seemed to, but he had speed and weight and a good angle. Luca went down under the brunt of his shoulder, bone ramming into soft organs and driving the man hard to the floor. Luca grunted and scrabbled under him, gasping hard for breath. The knife clattered away across the floor. Emmerich twisted his fingers into the man’s long hair and yanked his head back, baring his throat. He pushed the barrel of the bulldog up under Luca’s chin, into the soft triangle of flesh between his jawbones.

“ _Keine Bewegung,_ ” he snarled, realized he’d used the wrong language in his excitement, and tried again. “Don’t move.” Luca squirmed beneath him anyway, and Emmerich pulled back the hammer in warning.

“Em—Emery—don’t,” Ezra panted from somewhere nearby. Keeping the bulldog jammed up under Luca’s chin, Emmerich glanced over. Ezra was dragging himself up by the corner of a worktable, his face pale but set. He was gripping his upper arm, and bright blood seeped through a long slash in his shirt and coat and oozed under his fingers. “I’m all right.”

Emmerich’s heart was still thudding against his chest, rushing in his ears. “ _Wirklich?”_

Ezra nodded, moving his fingers against his arm. “It’s not bad.”

Emmerich still didn’t let go of Luca, but he eased the bulldog down a little. Luca swallowed against the tip of the barrel and his wide, dark eyes flicked back and forth.

“You can let him up,” Ezra said. “If you _don’t do that again,_ ” he added to Luca, who nodded as much as the firm metal of the pistol barrel allowed him. Emmerich lifted away, getting to his feet and keeping the bulldog hefted at his hip, still obviously pointed Luca’s way. He made no move to help Luca, and after a moment the man dragged himself up and leaned over his knees.

“Who is your attack dog, Ezra?” Luca said, wincing and touching his fingers to the back of his head, then gently to the underside of his throat. His hair now hung loosely around his face, having come undone in the scuffle.

“He’s called Emmerich,” Ezra said shortly. “And he’s the only man I can trust, because you’ve apparently been paid off. Who was it? Staard or Clavel? Or both of them?”

“Who does it matter,” Luca said. He sounded sullen and embarrassed, and Emmerich wasn’t certain if it was because he had been bested or because he was regretting the attack at all. Ezra clearly had no plans to hurt the man in return. “Everyone knows what you’ve done.”

“What, taking the _money?_ ” Ezra said. He was still gripping his wounded arm and looking pale, and Emmerich moved to his side. “I know it’s quite a lot, but that’s no reason for you—“

“No,” Luca said, his expression strange. “Killing Allister and Kegg.”

There was silence in the workroom for a long moment. 

“Us killing—” Ezra said. “Luca, who _told_ you that?”

“ _Scheiße,_ ” Emmerich muttered. He thought he understood already. His and Ezra’s flight from the brothel—with all the money, no less—had given the men who had lead the mutiny a perfect scapegoat. Word would be spreading quickly in the downmarket—as it had obviously already reached Luca—that they were the turncoats. Who had killed Kegg and Allister. Maybe that had been the plan the entire time. Clavel and Staard certainly hadn’t given much of a chase when he and Ezra had fled the Prince and Rose. Perhaps they had let them flee, only to later rouse the entire underworkings of the city against them. 

Ezra seemed to have realized it as well himself, as Luca hadn’t yet answered him. He caught Emmerich’s eyes, his face pale. His arm was still bleeding, but his grip on it had loosened, and blood was blossoming up the sleeve of his coat.

“It wasn’t us,” he said. “No, it wasn’t _us_.”

“Do you have the money?” Luca said, and Ezra winced.

“ _Yes_ , but—they would have killed us anyway! You don’t understand—it’s not how it seems.”

When Luca didn’t reply, Emmerich lost interest in him for the moment and turned to Ezra instead, reaching for his injured arm. “Let me see that.”

“Ah, _ah_ —no, it’s not that bad—“

“You’re right. Stop whinging.”

Ezra chuckled, but his arm was shaking. The wound was long but shallow, and Emmerich was sure Ezra was in the right about it not being very bad, but he had no experience with this sort of thing. It seemed like there was quite a lot of blood.

“You’ll need something for it,” Luca said, from where he was still sitting on the floor. “I’ve some iodine, if you’ll let me get it.”

Ezra nodded, and Luca got up off the floor and moved away, disappearing in the same direction he’d come from behind the printers.

“Are we sure we can trust him?” Emmerich said quietly, when the man was out of sight, and Ezra took a breath before answering.

“No,” he said. “But what choice have we got?”

#

Only minutes later they were back in a small, cluttered room that came off the main workroom—some sort of office, with a desk and several wood cabinets, all of them littered with papers and metal contraptions. There were no windows here, only oil lamps, and the room smelt strongly of chemical fumes. They had brought the two satchels in with them, and though Luca could clearly guess what was inside them, he’d said nothing.

Instead he’d brought them a brown glass bottle with a curling paper label, a bowl of water, and a thin linen shirt that was easily torn into strips, and left them alone. Now Ezra sat on a corner of the desk while Emmerich sat in the chair, carefully sliding Ezra’s coat off and then his shirt from his left side, peeling off the blood-stained fabric that had begun to dry and stick to his arm. He cleaned the blood carefully off Ezra’s skin first with the water from the bowl, turning it all a rosy pink. Then he wrung out the cloth, wet it again with the sharp-smelling contents of the glass bottle. Ezra hissed and flinched and curved away when it was pressed again his arm, and dug his fingers into Emmerich’s shoulder.

“Shh,” Emmerich said softly, before he could think better of it. Ezra passed him a quick glance, but it was only appreciative. He made no more noise for the rest of Emmerich’s careful but clumsy tending to, and at the end of it he even squeezed Emmerich’s hand, briefly, before pulling away and lowering himself from the desk. He slipped his sleeve back over his arm, the linen bandages showing under the bloodied gash in the fabric. Ezra inspected the gash across his coat sleeve—clearly ruined now—with a frown, but said nothing. 

A sound at the door made them both look up. Luca had returned, and was watching them from the doorway. Emmerich nearly upset the bowl of pink-tinged water, but Ezra seemed unruffled. He put a hand down and Emmerich took it, letting the boy take him from the chair. They stood side by side and Ezra kept his hand locked around Emmerich’s wrist, though Emmerich wasn’t trying awfully hard to pull away.

“They’ve already spoken to you,” Ezra said to Luca, and it was hardly a question. The man’s silence was enough of an answer. “What—exactly—did they tell you?”

“To—“ Luca swallowed, and glanced between them, “to keep at least one of you alive. Preferably—“ his eyes went to Emmerich for just an instant longer.

“To be able to bring them the money,” Ezra said. 

“There is a reward for either of you,” Luca said, dark eyes now focused to Ezra. “More for you dead, and Emmerich alive.”

“Why would they rather have _me_ alive,” Emmerich muttered, mostly to himself. But Ezra heard it, and answered.

“Because you were lower in Allister’s circle,” Ezra said. “They’ll figure they can intimidate or bribe you into cooperation. And they likely think that it was my idea to run with the money—and that you’re just following my lead.”

 _I am_ , Emmerich almost said, but held back. It had been Ezra’s idea to take the money, to flee, and he had gone with it because the only other option had looked to be getting killed. But now he was thinking that either way, no matter what they had done, they would have been accused of the deaths of Allister and Kegg. It was just a stroke of luck on Staard and Clavel’s parts that they had also taken the money and escaped, and made themselves look twice as guilty.

But he didn’t want Ezra to think it was his fault, that this could have been avoided if Emmerich hadn’t followed him, or that Emmerich _regretted_ following him. So he reached out and caught Ezra’s arm, squeezing firmly. Ezra’s bones felt light and oddly fragile through his warm skin, because his shirt had slipped to the side and Emmerich had ended up taking hold of his bare shoulder. But Ezra didn’t seem to mind; his hand flew up and closed over Emmerich’s, gripping back hard.

“They’re going to kill us both anyway,” Ezra said. He looked young again, thin and delicate in his brown linen shirt, dark hair in his eyes. 

Emmerich nodded. “Most likely.”

Ezra shivered. “What do we do?”

“We stop running,” Emmerich said, “and kill them first.”


	3. The Bulldog and the Mink

Before they could go about killing anyone, they had to organize themselves and what they had. They pulled their meager assets together, dragging the satchels back out to one of the long empty worktables in the printing room and spilling out the chambers of their guns, the metal casings clinking and rolling against the whorls of wood. Ezra had a full five bullets—which would have been six, if not for the one fired into the brothel mattress—but Emmerich had only been allotted two when Allister had given him the bulldog. Eight in all between them, hardly anything. Emmerich’s paltry two had caused Ezra to look at him in disbelief, and doubly so when he got his first good look at Emmerich’s pistol. 

“What is this?” Ezra said, lifting the empty bulldog by the hammer and examining it as though it were a suspect cut of meat. “This is ancient. Does she shoot?”

“She shoots,” Emmerich said, but thought of the hard buck of recoil and the frequency of misfires and frowned. “You saw her that night.” And had held her, slipping the pistol from Emmerich’s holster as though he did it all the time, as if he had every right to it.

“I wasn’t paying much mind at the time,” Ezra said. “I can’t believe Allister, or anyone, would put you on jobs with this. This is—“ he grimaced, and twisted the pistol around in his hands, peering into the empty chambers, “—quite old. They haven’t made this model for thirty years—and this is an early make.” 

“Allister called her the bulldog,” Emmerich said, and Ezra snorted. 

“More like _kleiner Kläffer,_ ” he said, and slid the empty pistol back at Emmerich. He knew pistols, that was clear enough. Emmerich had never been let near enough of them to even begin to. He hadn’t even known the model of this one he’d been allowed to carry. Once the Order had included guns into the Aggrieves, any makers that had continued their operations illegally began scrubbing any recognizable marks from their wares. They were only identifiable now to someone with a trained eye.

“What’s yours, then?” Emmerich said, nodding with his chin to Ezra’s clearly newer and more cared-for pistol.

“It’s a custom make; it’s called a Lutreole,” Ezra said, sliding his fingers over the dark polished wood of the grip. “There were only fifty or so made like it. Kegg gave it to me.”

“Gave, or lent out?”

Ezra looked up, eyes sharp. “Gave. It belongs to me.”

“ _Es tut m_ —I’m sorry. This wasn’t mine,” Emmerich said, pushing at the bulldog’s stout barrel and sending it into a glum spin on the tabletop. “I can barely manage to fire it.”

He wasn’t quite sure how to tell Ezra that his new companion was not trained or efficient in any sort of talents which might be useful in helping to defend themselves against the mutinous acts of their previous accomplices. He knew how to cut a purse and pick a lock and use his body in a less than decent manner, but beyond that he was mostly useless and he knew it well.

“I don’t know if I’d manage to fire it myself,” Ezra said, with something like a laugh. “It ought to be put up in a collection somewhere.”

Emmerich knew he was only teasing, but it still irked him that the only gun Allister had ever entrusted him with was, in Ezra’s view, such a brazen joke. An ancient pistol and only two bullets—the message was fairly clear. He hadn’t yet deserved anything better.

He turned his eye to Ezra’s pistol instead. The wood of its grip was so dark it appeared nearly black, and all of the metal furnishings and fastenings were a bright, hard silver. The length of the barrels had a detailed engraving etched into the surface, a rendition of a long sleek animal that twisted among furling leaves. It was beautiful, elegant, and quite different from any markings Emmerich had ever seen. Not that he had seen that many, but he could understand why there might have only been fifty ever made like it. The pistol was a gorgeous thing, likely worth more than any Emmerich had ever seen or touched.

“What is it?” Emmerich said, brushing his fingers along the graceful details, the lithe shape of the animal.

“A mink.”

“I’ve no idea what that is,” Emmerich said, and Ezra laughed lightly.

“Little animal,” he said. “They make coats from them sometimes.”

“And Kegg...gave this to you,” Emmerich said. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Ezra, only that he had a difficult time imagining such a thing when they both lived in a world where nothing came free and everything had to be fought for.

“Yes. He was...almost like a father to me,” Ezra said, soft suddenly. “I know that must seem odd. But he was. He took me in when I had nowhere to go, helped me when he had no cause to. He was never a kind man, but he did look after me in a way. The pistol was...it was a gift, but I very much had to prove myself for it.”

“That’s why they didn’t tell you about the plan,” Emmerich said. “They knew you wouldn’t go along with killing him.”

“Then why stick me up out of the way in that room, with you?” Ezra said. “They could’ve taken care of me along with Kegg. Just one more bullet, and I’d be out of their business.”

“How well do they know you?”

Ezra sighed and pushed his fingers through his hair. He did that often, and Emmerich was starting to wish he wouldn’t. Every time Ezra touched his hair, Emmerich wanted to know what it felt like—was it rough or soft, silky or coarse, what sorts of noises Ezra would make if it was tugged on. He rubbed a hand across his face and shifted in his chair.

“I don’t know,” Ezra was saying, meanwhile. “Well enough, I suppose. I’ve only ever been with Kegg’s men.”

“Would they count on you to run if you thought Kegg had been betrayed? Could they have known that you would do something like this?”

“I—I don’t know, Emery,” Ezra said, sounding truly unsure for the first time that Emmerich had heard. “I’ve kept to myself mostly, with them. Some knew me better than others, but of course they all knew how Kegg brought me in. And maybe he did favor me, just a little. I suppose there might have been...jealousy.”

Emmerich studied Ezra under the muted light that came in through the brown-papered windows. The boy had folded his hands neatly together on the tabletop, and though his face was calm he was clearly upset beneath that—a tension in his jaw and shoulders, brightness in his eyes. Emmerich tried to place Ezra together with Kegg in his mind, stretched his thoughts around the two of them to understand how Ezra could have come away with a paternal sentiment from their acquaintance.

Kegg had been a thin, sharp-faced blade of a man, crow-black hair receding from a pallid forehead, small like a rat and as shrewd as one as well. Emmerich had never exchanged as much as a word with him, being far beneath the man’s notice, but he had never sensed anything near to fatherly about him. Beside Allister, who had been tall and sturdy, loud-voiced and bearded, Kegg had always seemed like a small oily shadow slipping in and out of downmarket deals, not someone Emmerich would have ever trusted if Allister hadn’t first.

But Ezra had clearly respected Kegg, if not held some strange form of affection, and Emmerich wouldn’t speak his opinions of him. Emmerich hadn’t felt anything for Allister except a sort of dependent reliance for providing him the means to feed and clothe himself, along with a fear that one day the man would simply find him truly inadequate and no longer bother with him, and maybe he simply couldn’t understand. Nothing could ever replace Emmerich’s own family, and he hadn’t ever tried, and wouldn’t have looked to Allister even if he wanted to.

Ezra sighed suddenly and swept a hand back through his dark hair. “Clearly there was jealousy,” he amended. “If they choose me to be the one that they aimed to hunt down across the city like a dog." 

“Why don’t you just leave the Kingshore?” Luca suggested suddenly, from where he was leaning against the far end of the work table. Emmerich had nearly forgotten he was there.

“It wouldn’t stop them,” Ezra and Emmerich said together. Ezra’s smile after that was sudden and sharp.

“For how much we took, nothing will stop them. Also, we’re their hanged man to the entire city, everyone downmarket, for what happened to Allister and Kegg. They have to catch us.” He met Emmerich’s eyes across the table. “They’re depending on it.”

Emmerich couldn’t have spoken it better, so he only nodded.

“I’ve a room you can have, then,” Luca said. “It is small, but safe enough.”

“You don’t have to—“

“Ezra, it is the least I can do. I tried to kill you, for no other reason than that I was told I ought to. They won’t look for you here—they came to me because they went to everyone, even the most unlikely of us. If this is true, what they did, I can hide you.”

“It is true,” Ezra said. “But you oughtn’t risk your family, taking us in—”

“There’s no risk. I live here now,” Luca said. When Ezra made a sound in his throat, he continued, “it was simpler this way. After my wife—well. It was too difficult to keep our residence.” 

Ezra wilted a bit. “Luca, _mi dispiace—“_

“ _Non ti preoccupare,_ it’s better here,” Luca said with a pass of his hand. “Come then, I’ll show you.”

There was a staircase behind a door besides Luca’s office, which lead directly upstairs to a room above the large workroom below, at the furthest end of the building. It was clearly Luca’s personal quarters, though it was small and somewhat dingy, it was cared for and in some semblance of order. A second door on the opposite wall took them into a narrow back corridor, musty and unlit. There were even more doors here, a quite narrow one on the far end of the hall and another on the same wall that had just come out of.

Luca pushed open the latter of them and revealed a dimly lit room, filled with clutter. What little empty space there was dusty, cobwebby. “It’s not been used for some time,” he said, rather apologetically. 

“That’s certainly all right,” Ezra told him. “It’s already far more than I would have asked for.”

“There’s no need for you to go in and out of here through the main room,” Luca said. “This door, here—” he moved to a very narrow door at the end of the corridor, “—leads to back stairs. They come out on Ashpint Street; you can come and go as you please from there, without being seen by the men during the work hours, or disrupting me in my own room.” He looked to Emmerich then. “Or needing to pick my locks.”

Emmerich flushed, and Ezra only laughed and clasped Luca firmly on the shoulder and asked about a place to wash up, as two days trudging through the city had left them both inordinately dirty. There was a small room at the back of the printhouse, which held a solid wooden tub that could be filled from water-butt taps, boiled if wanted. They took turns with it, Emmerich going first. He didn’t bother with any boiling; he stripped down and sat shivering in the tub, scrubbing his skin with a rough rag and scouring the grease and dirt of brothels and rookeries and public houses of out his hair. The water was murky and grey-brown when he was done, and there was still dirt beneath his fingernails that wouldn’t come out, but that had been there for months already, perhaps even years.

A spotty mirror was hung up above the basin, and Emmerich briefly examined his worn and tired face in it, passed a hand over his stubbled jaw. He bared his teeth at the glass—he was lucky to still have all his own, plenty of men he knew did not—and dressed himself, rather loathe to wear his dirty garments but having nothing else available. He wondered if the vast amount of money they now had in their possession would ever go towards new belongings, especially as they had both lost everything but what they had been carrying with them that night, and he couldn’t live off Ezra’s charity for much longer.

When Emmerich returned to Luca’s office, Ezra was sitting on the desk again, one ankle hooked behind the other and his hands on his knees. Luca sat in the chair, leaning back and body relaxed. The two men were speaking easily to each other, Luca’s earlier violence towards Ezra apparently forgotten between them. But Emmerich couldn’t forget, and even though Ezra smiled at him and touched his arm in a reassuring way as he went out of the office towards the bath, he couldn’t shake his discomfort at being left alone with Luca in the small space.

Emmerich supposed he wasn’t welcome to sit on the desk as Ezra had been, so he remained in the doorway when Ezra had gone. The two leather satchels were sitting beside a large trunk in the corner of the office, and he supposed he ought to stay in here and keep an eye on them. Before he could do much of anything, Luca had turned to face him in a considerably less friendly manner than he had had with Ezra.

“He calls you Emery,” he said. “That is your name, then.”

“Emmerich,” Emmerich said, as he realized they never had been quite properly introduced. “It’s Emmerich.”

“And…you are his friend.”

“Yes,” Emmerich said, because he could say nothing else. He had known Ezra for little less than two days but he felt as though they were, at the very least, friends.

“Good,” Luca said, and nothing further. Emmerich had nothing much to say to him either. Though he would ordinarily have liked to ask several things of him—where he was from, how long he had known Ezra, what he knew about the boy and why he was so very different—he had just nearly shot the man not an hour’s half ago, and it was still difficult to feel friendly towards him. He didn’t miss the way that Luca occasionally glanced towards the satchels, either.

When Ezra returned sometime later, Emmerich was sitting on the trunk and playing with a small rushlight holder. He had run out of things to look at in the room, after spending some time admiring the ornate wooden cabinet in the corner and wondering if Luca was a holder of some illegal spirits, and glancing over the hopelessly tiny print of some of the papers scattered about, the iron holder was the next most interesting thing to pay attention to. He had never owned one himself.

Ezra was now wearing a shirt of Luca’s that was as large on him as the ruined one he had been wearing before, hanging down past his knuckles and far too wide about his throat. His hair was tousled and damp and falling over one eye, and he appeared so dreadfully young that Emmerich could hardly believe the things he had already seen Ezra do, or imagine the things he knew he must be capable of.

To Emmerich’s surprise, Ezra joined him in sitting on the trunk. There wasn’t quite enough room for the both of them there, and Ezra’s warm thigh pressed to his and his shoulder rubbed and fought against Emmerich’s. He smelled of sharp soap, of ink and paper that was likely from Luca’s shirt, and Emmerich closed his eyes against the heat that nudged at his belly.

“Your arm,” he said, simply for something to fill the silence. If it needed to be tended to again, he would gladly do it.

“I kept it out of the water,” Ezra said, touching his fingers to his arm. “It’s fine for now.”

 _“Ich bin froh, das zu hören,_ ” Emmerich said, and Ezra’s smile was gentle and warm. They were already so close together on the trunk, and Emmerich found himself leaning closer, drawn in by the shape of Ezra’s mouth.

“I imagine,” Luca said abruptly, startling them apart, “that you might be hungry.”

“Oh,” said Ezra, glancing away from Emmerich and rubbing at a spot on his cheek. “Yes, I suppose.”

#

They had a supper of bread and oysters, which Emmerich had never particularly like but had learnt to, since coming to this city. They sat together at one of the worktables, though Luca freely admitted he usually ate in his office. Emmerich only asked a single question of Luca during the meal—what was printed here, and the answer was Bibles—and otherwise spoke only to Ezra or stayed quiet. Luca often spoke to Ezra in his own language, which left Emmerich entirely out even if he’d had much else to say. Ezra appeared to be nearly fluent in it at well, which was not as surprising to Emmerich as it might have been.

After some time, he left them alone in the office and went upstairs to the small room he and Ezra were to share. He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, then went about shoving the clutter to the furthest corners he could, to clear a space for them to at least be able to fit in to sleep. He found a trunk of scratchy woolen blankets and placed it aside, as well as a small table and few battered chairs. In an old canvas sack he found a small collection of crumbling bricks—most in pieces, but a few still whole. With them he built up a small makeshift hearth, to keep a lamp on or even to have a small fire later that they could heat water with.

In his moving of the furniture, Emmerich had uncovered a single small, round window at the back wall of the room. The thick-paned glass looked out towards the banks of the Lowon, the slipways and frameworks that rose down the river. Emmerich stood there for a time, watching distant masts move beyond the rooftops and the orange ball of the sun sink through oily smoke and yellowish fog. If there were missionary ships in the air, they were hidden above the gloom.

The door opened after a time, and Ezra slipped through into the room. He carried a lamp, and their two satchels were slung off his shoulder. He lowered them to the floor as he glanced about at the work Emmerich had done.

“Oh,” he said, when his eyes found Emmerich at the window. “Did you—?”

“We’ll still need something to sleep on,” Emmerich said. “Although I suppose the floor could suffice for a night or two.”

“I’ll ask Luca about it,” Ezra said. He paused, touching a hand to his hair then rubbing at the back of his neck. “I don’t blame you for not liking him much. I’m not—”

“It’s all right,” Emmerich said. “We’ve not much of a choice in this, I know.”

Ezra only nodded at that, and then did what he had done in every new room they had ever entered since Emmerich had met him—moved about, touching as much of the walls and the corners as he could reach until satisfied. He found a loose enough board in one wall, and managed to pry out enough it out that they could slide the satchels into the space between the walls and close it back up again. They did it without much discussion—Ezra’s reasoning hadn’t been anything to do with trusting Luca, but simply out of logic and deniability, were they to be caught by anyone who had heard the story of their traitorousness second-hand. Emmerich had simply agreed with him, though his personal reasons were based in not trusting Luca very much at all. He had seen the way the man looked at the satchels when Ezra had been out of the room. 

He could hardly blame Luca for doing so; it was a great deal of money after all and Emmerich likely would have looked at it the same way had he been in Luca’s place. But Luca hadn’t much endeared himself to Emmerich after what he had done to Ezra, even if he had been sorry afterwards. He appeared to be a man with a sort of desperation about him, not uncommon in men of the poor working class, but his willingness to attack a boy who thought of him as a friend was unappealing.

Deeper in the contents of the room they found several thin bed pallets, which rid them of the need to even ask Luca about it at all. As they moved about, piling the woolen blankets on each bed, Emmerich couldn’t help but eye the large space between them and wonder about it. Two nights he and Ezra had spent in the same bed, back-to-back and having nothing but each other to depend on. They were less isolated now with Luca’s assistance, but it still very much felt as though Ezra was the only one he could trust, the only one standing in his same place and seeing the same view of the world. And yet, he had never felt less alone since coming to this city.

The light from the lamp Ezra had brought up gave off was reddish-orange and steady, made everything look like burnished copper and fire. They had set it on the small hearth Emmerich had built up from the bricks—Ezra had been both startled and pleased by it, and Emmerich had felt absurdly accomplished—pulled the bedding close to it, and sat themselves down with an easy silence between them.

“I’ve thought of something,” Emmerich said at length.

Ezra drew himself up, locking his arms about his knees. “Oh?”

“Did Kegg ever deal with Marcellin Chambért?”

In the glow of the lamp, Ezra shook his head. “The name’s not familiar.”

“He wasn’t much of anything, not any real sort of downmarketer, but he held wares sometimes. When Allister couldn’t move them right away, or had no prospects for buyers. If we’re looking for more arms, there’s a chance he could be holding some.”

“He’s probably been spoken to, just like Luca.”

“It’s likely. But at least we’ll know, and can prepare for it this time.”

“All right,” Ezra said, with a slow nod. “Tomorrow, then. We’ll go to see him.”

Though it was early and the sun was hardly down, they were both eager to put out the lamp and crawl into their separate beds and reach for sleep. But despite the weight on his eyes and in his body, Emmerich found himself laying quite awake for some time, breathing slowly into the dark and listening to the creak of boards settling against each other. He could not sleep against the solitude that pressed in around him.

“Emery,” came Ezra’s voice across the dark room then, soft and almost unsure.

Emmerich shifted, rolling beneath the blankets. “Yes?”

“Would it be all right—I mean, would it trouble you if I...if we...” Ezra took in a breath then, and held it. “Never mind,” he muttered.

But Emmerich thought he knew what it was Ezra was too guarded to say aloud, and without words he rolled out of his pallet, and shoved it across the creaking floor until it nudged up against Ezra’s own. Ezra watched him, his head on the pillow and his eyes open and still, saying nothing.

 _“Das ist gut?_ ” Emmerich said, hesitating at the edge before climbing back into the bed. He’d been fairly sure this was what had been meant, but if he was wrong...

“Good,” Ezra said quietly. His fingers curled into the bedclothes, and Emmerich thought he saw a shadow of a smile on his face, in the dark.

Emmerich settled back into his blankets contentedly. He listened for long minutes as Ezra’s breathing slowed and evened out, and the boy was asleep. “ _Gute Nacht und schlafe gut,_ ” he said softly, and closed his eyes.

#

Some time later, he was woken by the reedy sound of creaking footsteps on the back stairs. His hand was wrapped around the bulldog’s grip, finger on the trigger, in an instant. They were not the heavy steps of a man of Luca’s build, and Ezra was here beside him, still sleeping. There wasn’t time to wake him, either; the sound of the footsteps was nearly upon them. Emmerich rolled out of the bedding and stole quickly across to the door, pistol in hand and bare feet cold on the wooden boards.

He leant out into the corridor in time to see a shadow slip in through the narrow door that lead to the back stairs. It was small and slim and carrying no light. When Emmerich took another cautious step into the hall, it went quite still against the wall. For a moment, neither of them moved. Emmerich was just about to raise his pistol and call a warning when the shadow darted forward, rushing at him with startling speed.

Emmerich jumped aside, barely avoiding a swipe of the shadow’s arm, something small and pointed grasped in the hand. His back hit hard against the wall, and then the shadow was at him again, quick and near-silent on its feet. Blindly, he dodged, and felt the breeze of another nimble swipe aimed low across his belly. He followed the swing of the arm in the shadows, grabbed where he thought it might come to, and his hand closed around a thin wrist under chilled skin. He drew his arm back, dragging the shadow close to his chest, catching it around the waist and twisting it in his arms so it was trapped against him. The shape hissed and spit at him, struggling and fighting to free its arm, scratching at him with its free hand.

The nearest door flung open and Ezra came out with the lamp, bringing flickering golden-bronze light into the small space. When it washed over Emmerich and the thrashing shape in his arms, light gleamed off the edge of the shape in his captive’s hand—a kind of straight blade, small but quite sharp looking.

Ezra hurried closer, raising the light higher. “Emery, let her go!”

The idiocy of the demand startled him. “She’s got a fucking knife!”

“Ah, then—best keep hold of her,” Ezra said, and Emmerich snorted and did so.

“Who are you?” the girl hissed then, panting through her teeth. “Thieves? Murderers? I’ll scream if you touch me!”

“Vena,” Ezra said, which only stalled the girl for a moment before she began to thrash again. Ezra caught her face and turned her, though she struggled and spat at him, fighting in Emmerich’s arms. “Vena, look at me. It’s Ezra. I know you. Do you remember me?”

“Ezra?” the girl said, going still. Emmerich didn’t trust it, and kept his arms firm around her. But the fight had gone out of her for the moment. “Ezra, that’s you?”

“Yes,” Ezra said, favoring her with one of those gentle smiles. He glanced up at Emmerich then. “You can let her go now.”

Reluctantly, Emmerich did so. But the girl only shook herself out of his arms and neither screamed nor thrust her knife into either of them. She had thick dark hair and dark eyes, and couldn’t have been much more than fifteen years of age. Her clothes were plain and rough, and a bruise bloomed across the skin of one cheek. Emmerich was quite sure he hadn’t just put it there—it had the yellow tinge of being old, half-healed. 

“All right,” Ezra said, still soothing and gentle. “We didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I wasn’t scared,” the girl replied, and Emmerich quite agreed. He had the scratches and sore spots to prove it, and if he hadn’t caught the girl at the moment he had, he was sure that he would have had a knife in his belly or across his throat.

“Papa gave you the extra room?” she asked then, and Emmerich understood. Clearly Luca had a daughter. They were similar enough in the color of their hair and eyes and skin, though she lacked most of the accent that lilted through Luca’s own speech. Perhaps born here, or come to the ‘shores early enough to learn to speak more as a local.

“Yes,” Ezra was saying to her. “We’re in a bit of trouble, ourselves. We only needed a place to stay for a while.”

“You’re always in trouble, Ezra,” the girl said in reply. “It’s nothing new.”

Emmerich snorted, but both Vena and Ezra ignored him. “What have you been doing, out so late?” Ezra was asking her, with the gently chiding tone of an elder brother.

“Late? It’s hardly past nine,” Vena said. She glanced between them, taking in their ruffled hair and dressed-down state. “I thought men like you would be wide-awake at this hour.”

“Yes, well,” Ezra said. “I thought nice young girls like you would still be indoors at this hour.”

“I work in a scullery in Bridehart,” Vena said, and Ezra’s brow furrowed. “In a great house on Eustower Street, I’ve half of Sundays off but I was out most of it, but I was bringing some things to papa tonight before I go back. That’s why I’m out.”

“Ah,” Ezra said, and that was all. Vena combed her hair back from her face with her fingers and set her shoulders.

“Are you going to let me go, now?” she said. “I’ve to see papa and be back.”

“All right,” Ezra said, as Vena rolled up her little knife into a fold of her dress. She glanced between the two of them one more time, lingering on Emmerich though there was no real reproach in her face. She had struck at him first, after all, and he was the more winded from their encounter. Emmerich was only hopeful that there was no one of this family left for him to tussle with. He generally preferred to make better first impressions.

Vena slipped away through the door that lead to Luca’s quarters, and Ezra and Emmerich retired to their own small space. Once the door had shut behind them, Ezra spoke immediately.

“She doesn’t work in a scullery on Eustower Street,” he said, and Emmerich looked at him. “There are no great houses there. It’s where the parish houses and missionary schools are. Either she doesn’t work there or she’s forgotten where she’s employed.”

“She’d a bruise,” Emmerich said, touching a hand to his own face. “Just here.”

Ezra frowned at the door that lead to Luca’s room. “I suppose it isn’t any of my concern,” he said, eventually.

“You’re worried for her.”

Ezra nodded. “I’ve known Luca and his family for three years. Vena was only a little girl then. I met them soon after...well, they helped me when I needed it. I’ve helped them back since, at times when I can. But I haven’t seen them since his wife...”

He went silent for several long moments, until Emmerich urged him on. “His wife?”

“Dead of fever,” Ezra said. “Last winter. I haven’t seen either Luca or Vena since then.”

“There’s nothing to do for it,” Emmerich said, and laid a hand on Ezra’s shoulder.

“I know,” Ezra said, and it seemed to Emmerich that he even leaned into the touch. When they crawled back into the bedclothes, it was even closer together than they had been before, and the way Ezra’s arm and hand occasionally brushed against his own was not unwelcome.

#

“Right, now,” Ezra said, his voice a rough whisper in the chilled grey air. Close enough to Emmerich that he could feel the curl of warm breath against his skin. “You remember our signal?”

They were standing on the busy corner opposite Marcellin Chambért’s shop in Grand Faire, which was wedged between a milliner and a cordwainer’s. The windows had half-drawn curtains behind them, making it difficult to see into the shop itself. It would be advantageous once they were inside, to avoid being seen by passersby, but at the moment it was more of a hindrance than anything. There was no way of telling if Chambért was even within, or if there were others inside as well. They had been standing on the corner for some minutes already, but no one had gone in or out.

Emmerich gave a single nod. “Are you quite sure about this?”

“Mm.” Ezra glanced around the crowded shopping street, the wind flapping the collar of his coat around his neck.

“Ezra,” Emmerich said sharply, to get his attention. Ezra turned to him with an unexpectedly wide grin.

“I’m sure,” he said. “Don’t fret.”

“I am not fretting,” Emmerich said, and frowned. How could he possibly explain to Ezra that he had never done something like this before, acting on a plan that he had helped to put together, and that a part of him was terrified. There was an ease to Ezra’s countenance and attitude that seemed to mean this was of no real worry to him, that perhaps he had done things of this sort quite often and was depending on his own experience and confidence to carry him through it. Emmerich had no such reliance.

“I think we’ve been standing here long enough,” Ezra said. Emmerich did agree, although it had been such a long time since he had spent any time in this area of the city that he was almost quite enjoying it.

Grand Faire was nothing like the industry district, the rookeries, the area of the city in which Emmerich had lived and mostly worked, or even the district where the Prince and Rose had been. The streets here were bustling with men and women passing through, and lively with shouts from costermongers and street peddlers from their carts, full of the cacophony of organ grinders and the noise of horses and carriages clattering past. Here, the shops catered to those of style and some wealth—not as affluent as the patrons of the west districts—but the buildings were in good upkeep and the streets were solidly paved, though muck from rain and grit and passing horses ran thick and blotted out much of the stones. Ladies crossing in their long skirts paid a half-peg for a street sweeper to cross before them, and gentlemen walked to the outside of the pavement when accompanying them.

Emmerich and Ezra simply took to the street without the aid of a sweeper, as their clothes were already dirtied from days of being worn in the dingier places of the city and they could hardly make them worse. Ezra’s coat sleeve still bore the wide gash from Luca’s knife, though its color was dark enough to mask whatever blood had gotten onto it. They took some care to shake the muck from their boots as they approached the door to Chambért’s shop.

“ _Seid bereit,_ ” Ezra murmured, before pushing open the door and leading them both inside.

Marcellin Chambért was an old missionary man, long retired, who now made his living selling maps and charts of the ‘best’ aeolian routes to inexperienced missionary crews or needy merchant ship captains at outrageous prices. He also occasionally pawned wares for Allister, which was how Emmerich knew of him. Emmerich doubted the man remembered his face or his name, which was how they wanted it. Despite the fact that they were clearly not missionaries nor merchants themselves, it would do no good to arouse suspicion instantly.

When they entered the shop, Chambért was behind the counter. He had the look of a skeleton; long knobby fingers and a sharp leanness to his face that perhaps had one been handsome in youth. Thinned, greying hair was combed carefully to the sides and he sported a thin mustache on his upper lip. Despite his aged state, his eyes were still bright and shrewd, and they flicked between Ezra and Emmerich as they entered. A bell tinkled above them, rigged to the doorframe. When the door shut behind them, much of the street noise was dimmed.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Chambért said, setting down a brass-rimmed glass lens through which he had been peering. There was no one else inside the shop, and the place smelled strongly of musty paper, ink and oilskin. Maps and charts hung everywhere on the walls, rolled up in wooden stands. Dusty light came through in slants between the curtains and Ezra moved into it, to examine a large detailed map of the Kingshore isles itself hanging on the wall, traced entirely over with blue patterns of dots in wide whorls and arrows. His profile was illuminated in pale grey; the curve of his neck and line of his jaw, the fullness of his mouth. Emmerich glanced away, heat sudden in his belly.

“We’re here to have a look at your wares,” Ezra said then, with an air of near indifference, as though he had no interest for wares at all. Nevertheless, Chambért straightened with a look of intrigue.

“Indeed,” he said. He moved his hand—perhaps to reach for the pair of half-spectacles which sat beside the money box—and in doing so knocked the heavy magnifying glass from the counter. It thudded to the wooden floor, and Chambért uttered a soft grunt of displeasure. With careful slowness, he lowered himself down behind the counter to retrieve it.

When he emerged again he made straight for Ezra, without a glance or even a sense of acknowledging that Emmerich was there at all. Ezra was the one who had spoken, after all, the one who was expressing interest in a purchase, while Emmerich was just standing quietly to the inside of the door. Still, Emmerich watched the man carefully. He hadn’t forgotten that the reward Clavel and Staard were offering was greater when Ezra didn’t survive. They had expected Chambért to know about it, but Emmerich was simply getting worried for his companion’s sake now.

He stretched his elbow out and knocked it against a rolled-up chart leaning against a pile of others in a wooden stand. They fell against each other, toppling over and out of the stand, bouncing hollowly to the floor and rolling. Chambért’s didn’t as much as glance his way, not for a single moment. His gaze stayed firmly fixed to Ezra, without even blinking.

“I’ve some things in the back,” he was saying to Ezra, reaching out to grip the boy’s shoulder with a skeletal hand. “Shall we?”

Emmerich coughed into the collar of his coat, at the same time that Ezra cleared his throat against the back of his hand. Their eyes flicked together and held across the room, and Ezra’s pistol was in his hand a moment later, pressed intimately up against the small of Chambért’s back.

“Yes,” Ezra said to the man, who had clearly felt the pistol and had gone quite still, jaw set. “We shall.”

With a gentle push of his revolver, Ezra guided Chambért towards the door at the back of the shop, both of them disappearing through it. Emmerich slid the bolt across the door at the front and pulled the window curtains fully closed before following Ezra into the back room. No sense in being disturbed if it could be helped.

There was a small storage room here, cluttered with boxes and shelves, with another door that lead to narrow stairs going up. Ezra had Chambért on his knees now, the pistol against the side of his head, and was fishing something from the man’s coat pocket.

“I’ll be having this,” Ezra said, retrieving something and pocketing it himself, too quickly for Emmerich to see the thing clearly. Chambért made a noise of protest, but when Ezra tapped the nose of his pistol against the back of the man’s head, he fell silent. As Ezra was rising to his feet, there came a soft creak of a board that wasn’t from the downstairs—in fact, it seemed to have come from the ceiling above. Another came, and Emmerich glanced up, but Ezra did not appear to have noticed.

Emmerich made a sharp gesture to catch his attention, and held up a finger to his mouth. Ezra’s eyes came to him and Emmerich raised one hand, to point above. The boy’s face hardened immediately and he dropped his chin, tilting his head and raising his eyes, so that his unblinking gaze was leveled at Chambért from just below his dark brows. It had been one fluid motion, that look coming to his face, and Emmerich felt something very inappropriate stir in him.

“Who else is here?” Ezra said to Chambért, quite conversationally.

“No—no one—“

“Who else,” Ezra said, more slowly this time, “is here?” Each word had a dangerous lilt to it, but spoken barely above a pleasant murmur.

Chambért’s lank face paled and twisted. He pointed towards a wooden door, set back behind rows of shelves. “ _Mon—mon neveu! Que mon neveu! Il travaille pour moi…”_

“Only his nephew,” Ezra said to Emmerich, who was not very surprised that Ezra had understood. “He works for him.” He looked back at Chambért. “What’s his name?”

 _“L-Léonard,_ ” Chambért stammered, and Ezra raised an eyebrow and nuzzled the barrel of the pistol against the man’s sparse hairline. _“Vraiment, c'est la vérité!"_

“Ah,” Ezra said. _“Tu les amènes ici.”_

At once, Chambért raised his voice and shouted loudly, “ _Léonard, viens ici! Maintenant!”_

“ _D’accord, je serai la,”_ came a reply, distant and muffled from somewhere above. Footsteps creaked along the ceiling, and then came heavy on stairs. Ezra caught Emmerich’s eye, jerked his head towards the doorway. Emmerich moved there, pressing himself up against the wall, out of sight of anyone immediately entering into the room.

And as soon as Chambért’s nephew walked through, Emmerich sent the flat of his boot hard into the back of the man’s knee and dropped him easily to the floor. The man caught himself on his palms, and froze as Emmerich cocked the bulldog and set the barrel gently against the back of his head. From the sharp grin Ezra threw him, Emmerich knew that was what he’d wanted.

He still didn’t know how Ezra planned to continue from here—anything they’d discussed hadn’t included keeping Chambért and his nephew on their knees in a back room at pistol end—but he did know he couldn’t let it appear that he didn’t. This was entirely Ezra’s game now, but to Chambért it had to look like it was both of theirs, together. A crack between them could be exploited; they had to be seamless, one driving force. _Zusammen._

“Now,” Ezra said, “I suppose we ought to talk about those wares. What do you have?”

“What reason do I have to tell you?” Chambért sniveled.

“To begin with, we could shoot your nephew,” Ezra said, and turned to look over at Emmerich and the man he had on the floor. “He’s of no import.”

Emmerich found himself going quite still and cold. Was Ezra suggesting that he should shoot this man in the back of the head? Emmerich had never intentionally harmed another man in his life, certainly never put a bullet into one. He wasn’t honestly sure if he could manage it. Chambért’s nephew could hardly be older than himself, and he was shaking beneath the aim of the bulldog, murmuring quiet trembling prayers to himself.

Fortunately, Chambért was frightened enough by even the mention of it that he bowed at once.

“I’ve nothing here!” he cried. “ _Vraiment,_ they took what I was holding when they told me to watch out for you. I’ve nothing here, nothing at all! Nothing you would want.”

Ezra and Emmerich looked at each other over the man’s head. With the care that Clavel and Staard had already gone to at making sure they had no easy time of it running, it was hardly unbelievable that they would clear out anything that could help them.

“A pity,” Ezra said then, and got down on one knee beside Chambért. Emmerich kept his own pistol pressed to Léonard’s head, carefully unmoving, as though he had expected this. Ezra had leant close to the man and was speaking softly in the same language he had used before, his low voice twisting like liquid around the words, every sentence sounding as though he were promising nothing but something most exquisite and wonderful things. But Chambért’s eyes were squeezed shut and his narrow face was etched with something that was either fear or anguish.

Emmerich recognized this language they'd been speaking, even if he could neither speak nor understand a word of it himself. One of the First Districts, the official languages set down by the Order welcome to be spoken in any city it controlled and its aughterlands. Unlike certain others which were merely tolerated, or his own, which was entirely out of favor and could even warrant an arrest depending on who you spoke it near. Emmerich had once gone to the Brokens for two nights just for idly singing a children’s rhyme when a constable happened to be within hearing.

Ezra rose to his feet then, looking quite calm and pleasant. For having just learned that their only plan had resulted in nothing, he didn’t appear upset.

“Upstairs, I think, while we leave,” he said, and tapped the end of his pistol against Chambért’s forehead. “Up with you. Léonard, you as well. Oh, you don’t even speak English, do you? _Lève-toi, maintenant. Tu vas en haut de l'escalier, s'il vous plait._ Emery, get him up, would you?”

#

Minutes later, they were out again in the busy streets of Grand Faire, having left Chambért’s little shop without much fuss. Neither Chambért nor his nephew seemed interested in stopping them, or even having anything further to do with them. Emmerich stepped close to Ezra as they walked, hoping the boy would tell him something more about what had just happened. But Ezra stayed silent at his side, as calm and unexcited as he had been in the small backroom of the shop.

“What were you telling him?” Emmeruch asked finally. “Chambért, I mean.”

Ezra only smiled, somewhat secretively. “Oh, just a few things. Things he won’t like to have happen to him, or his nephew. I’m more interested in why—“ Ezra said, then laughed. “We signaled at the same time. What tipped you?”

“He wasn’t blinking,” Emmerich said, and smiled a bit when Ezra’s brows rose. “He wouldn’t take his eyes off you. Even when I knocked over those maps. He was—“

“—thinking about shooting me,” Ezra finished. “I saw the pistol.”

Emmerich hadn’t. “Where?”

“He had it behind the counter. When he dropped the magnifying glass, it was purposeful. When he bent to pick it up he put the pistol into his coat pocket.”

“I didn’t realize,” Emmerich said, frowning. It seemed something as obvious as that, he should have. “I’d no idea he had a pistol.”

“But you saw something else,” Ezra said, and it seemed to Emmerich that his next step moved him a little bit closer, so that their shoulders bumped and their arms swung together. “If you don’t remember, we signaled at the same time. I noticed the revolver. You noticed the way he behaved. Either way, it meant the same thing.”

“We did get out easily enough,” Emmerich said, and Ezra grinned. “Though it does mean we’re one mark down on getting any extra arms for ourselves. Eight bullets still won’t get us far.”

“Ah, well,” Ezra said. “I’ve no idea how many bullets are in Chambért’s pistol, but we’ve got those now. The revolver as well.” Emmerich was only partly surprised—it must have been the object that Ezra had taken from Chambért’s coat and pocketed. “Still, it isn’t much more of a success.”

“He’ll likely go right to Staard and Clavel,” Emmerich said. “They’ll realize what we’re doing.”

“Let them realize, then,” Ezra said. “Then we won’t be the only ones looking over our shoulders. Though I doubt Chambért will want to deal with anyone downmarket for a while.”

“Ezra, what did you tell him?”

“Just described the bits of him I’d cut off if he were to go right to Staard and Clavel,” Ezra said, with a sudden fierce grin. Emmerich was taken aback for a moment at both the pleasure in Ezra’s tone and the way he seemed so comfortable with the idea. Ezra hadn’t struck him as cruel before, and Emmerich doubted he was, but there was certainly a willingness in him to do dark things if there was a need of it. The way he had spoken to Chambért alone was proof enough of that; the quiet but deadly force that had chilled his voice and hardened his elegant face.

They walked with silence between them along the street for a time. Around them the street was still noisy and clamorous, but Emmerich hardly heard any of it now. They wound past an organ grinder and a boy shouting about matchsticks, and hopped out of the way of a carriage as it splashed through a wide puddle in the street, throwing thick brown runoff onto their boots and trousers.

“I feel as though I ought to tell you,” Ezra said then, “that I’ve run out of ideas for the moment.”

Emmerich clenched his hands within his pockets, closed his eyes as the wind blew his hair into them. “So have I.”

#

The printing house was running, the workroom filled with laborers and noise, the clank of machinery and carrying voices. Ezra and Emmerich went in the back way that Luca had shown them, taking the narrow creaking stairs up to their room from Ashpint Street, and hanging up their coats on pieces of clutter. The noise of the main room came through the wooden walls and floor, rumbled the boards and brought a metallic scent to the air.

Emmerich boiled water for tea on the makeshift hearth and Ezra sat at a small table pulled from the corner and emptied out the chambers of Chambért’s revolver. He found only three bullets there.

“Revolver’s no good, not worth keeping,” he reported, tossing the thing down to the table. “Terrible make, likely couldn’t hit anything with it from more than five paces away. Yours is better, even.”

Emmerich grunted in answer. He knew he shouldn’t take such offense where the bulldog was concerned, but it was one of the very few things he could even call his and he felt somewhat protective of it. He didn’t care that it was an ancient, unwieldy thing with terrible precision—it was his now, even if the transfer of ownership had been unintended.

Ezra seemed to sense that he had said something to insult, as he spoke no further and instead went to put Chambért’s revolver into the wallspace with the satchels. The bullets he pocketed. Then he came to stand beside Emmerich at the stove, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms across his chest. For a few minutes he said nothing, and Emmerich felt the heat of his gaze as a strong prickle at the back of his neck.

“When we met,” Ezra said suddenly. “What happened?”

“More than I like thinking about,” Emmerich said, and got a laugh back in return.

“I meant,” Ezra said, smiling in a way that Emmerich couldn’t look at for long. “What did we each do? The first thing.”

“You—walked around the room. Looked it over,” Emmerich said. Even if he hadn’t remembered, he knew by now it would have been the first thing Ezra would have done.

“And what did you do?”

Emmerich cleared his throat and shifted his body, replanting his boots on floorboards. “I watched you.”

Ezra nodded. “Why?”

“Because I was trying to learn about you.”

“Exactly,” Ezra said, eyes bright. “Yes.”

“What are you getting at?” Emmerich said, but he thought he knew already.

“I was only thinking that—once this is over with, if we survive—we should stay together. We work well together, Emery, I know you can see that.”

He could. But there was more bad in their companionship than good. As much as Ezra was correct about the way their habits and skills fell together, there was a part of Emmerich that would only be harmful to them, would only get worse with time and familiarity and would eventually drive them apart. It was already too strong now, nearly impossible to ignore or put aside, and it only grew with every passing moment.

So he only said, “We’ll see,” and turned back to his tea. He thought he could sense disappointment from the set of Ezra’s shoulders and mouth, but he had to overlook it. It was no fault of Ezra’s that Emmerich was no ideal companion, for more than just one reason.

They passed the rest of the afternoon in silence. Ezra had found a book to read, likely from somewhere in this cluttered room, and had settled up against the wall with it. Emmerich spent most of his time by the window, listening to the churning noise from the printhouse and every rare once in a while spotting the hull of a missionary ship in the dregs of the heavy clouds.

“Did you ever think about going to a parish school?” Emmerich said at length, when the gas lamps were being lit outside the windows and the fog was thick and low over the river. If Ezra had any of the required talents for it he probably would be in the training already, but still Emmerich was curious. Ezra didn’t reply, and after a few moments Emmerich turned around to ask him again.

But Ezra had fallen asleep sitting up against the wall. His dark hair fell over one eye, brushing against the light skin of his cheek. The collar of his shirt was open about his throat, down below the dip of his neck, and his chest rose and fell lightly with his breathing. His lips were pink and parted gently, his face calm and young. Suddenly Emmerich could hardly look at him. His want was nearly overwhelming. If he stayed near the boy for one more moment, he might go mad with it.

Emmerich moved from the window, unsteadily, one hand curled against his stomach where the worst of his madness festered. He took his coat from the wall and his pistol from the table. Then he left the attic room, down the back stairs and out the alley onto Ashpint Street again, and went to find Archie.

#

The gas lamps near the slipways were greenish-yellow through the fog, eerie along the waterfront, heavy mist curling around the posts and planks of the docks. It hadn’t taken long to get here from the printhouse once Emmerich had gotten out of the alleyways around the factories and found a street he was familiar with. Archie had been set to patrol here since the last few months, along with several others of the clergy guard, though Emmerich hadn’t come to find him for some time.

After not too long a time of waiting about, a man dressed in dark colors strode down the side of the waterfront, a caplet hung about his shoulders and his helmet bearing a solid white cross. From his place in the shadowed eaves, Emmerich waited until the man had come close enough to recognize fully through the fog, and even then he allowed him to pass by before speaking.

“Evening, Constable,” Emmerich said, and the man whirled on his heel with a startled curse. When his eyes lit on Emmerich, leaning against the wall, he drew himself up with an attempt at some dignity. 

“God’s spit, Mandelbrauss, don’t lurk like that,” he said, reaching up to tip his helmet back. The face beneath was fair and freckled, large eyes and a swath of straw-colored fringe across his forehead. Clergy Constable Archibald Livensy was a few good years Emmerich’s senior but could have been younger than Ezra for the look of him.

Emmerich took a step from the shadows, hands in his pockets and a half-smile on his mouth. There was a way he acted with Archie that he did with no one else, a confidence he showed the man that he was not nearly so foolish as to display near other men of his ilk. They would cut him down for it, but with Archie—he expected this of a poor immigrant boy who survived on the outside of the law. Even Emmerich’s accent deepened when he spoke with the Constable, each w turning hard on his tongue and every j softening.

“Haven’t seen you about,” Archie said as he came closer. Emmerich could see the truncheon and clacker he carried at his belt. No lantern, though the shipyard was lit up well enough along the waterfront to afford the lack of it.

“Lonely, were you?” Emmerich said, with a bit of a grin.

Archie snorted. “Not hardly.”

“How’s your wife, then?”

“Gone in the family way once more,” Archie said, long-suffering in his tone.

Emmerich grinned fully then. “Again? Archie, you do keep busy without me.”

Archie scowled at him. “Did you have something you wanted, or ought I to arrest you on principle?”

“It’s not exactly your wife I want to know about, is it?” Emmerich said, taking the Constable by the shoulder and walking him back towards the wide wood doors that lead inside the slipway. 

Not long afterwards they were deep in the wooden framework constructed around the half-finished keel of a ship being built for the river. The metal hull swelled in the space, towering to the ceiling and curving outwards towards the walls, colored black and rust-red. Lights from the gaslamps leaked in around them, staining everything with sickly green and yellow.

“Getting quite...good at this,” Archie breathed, his head tipped back against a broad beam and his hand burrowed deep in Emmerich’s hair. The whisper of his voice echoed as a hollow hiss down the length of the slipway.

Emmerich would have smiled, had his mouth not been otherwise occupied. Archie said the same every time; it was expected now to hear it. Emmerich had first gotten down on his knees for the Constable when he’d arrested Emmerich for pickpocketing in his second week in the city, years and years ago. At the time Emmerich hadn’t known enough of the local language to talk his way out of it, but he’d known enough of how to put his mouth to other uses.

Since then he’d known Archie through the courtship of a young lady who was now his wife, his first, second, third, and now fourth child, and his attempts and failures at promotion to sergeant. Archie in turn had seen Emmerich through several stints in the Brokens, helped him out of one or two of them, and had even once kept Emmerich from being shipped up country to spend several years in a highland prison. While not the most conventional friendship, it had been the one constant in Emmerich’s life in this city. He could rely on Archie to be...well, to be Archie.

And also to always finish quickly. As Emmerich leaned over to spit, Archie adjusted his trousers and straightened his helmet, though the effect was generally lost against his reddened face and dampened skin. 

“Heard there’s a bit of a stirring in the downmarket,” Archie said then, and Emmerich lifted himself to sit on a board beside him. “Some deal gone wrong Friday last. ‘course, the details are somewhat dodgy, not exactly my area. Thought you might have heard something of it.”

Emmerich wiped at his mouth and shrugged one shoulder. “What would I know? I’ve told you I don’t fall in with that sort.” But if news had reached the constabulary itself, even Clavel and Staard would have to be careful of their movements about the city. It was good news for himself and Ezra.

Archie sighed and straightened his helmet again. “Right, yes, you only pickpocket on rare occasion, I remember.”

Emmerich sat back on the framework, spreading his legs a bit. “Don’t suppose you’d want to have a sit in my lap, then,” he said, giving himself a few encouraging strokes and trying not to sound too hopeful. 

Archie fairly balked at the suggestion, giving Emmerich such a disparaging look that he knew it would be of no use to even tease the man about it.

“Then it’ll be your hand or your mouth,” Emmerich said.

He’d known it before he’d asked; it was just something Archie would frustratingly never do. Emmerich hadn’t had a proper go in ages. It had been years, at least with a man. He and Archie had kept up this convenient if rather chaste arrangement for nearly the entire time since Emmerich had come to the ‘shores, and it was satisfying when he could get it but...never enough. Never near enough.

Archie knelt between his knees and got to work with his hand, clearly too unnerved by Emmerich’s outrageous suggestion of sodomy to use a more intimate part of his body. His hands were rough and square and clumsy, indelicate, but Emmerich was in a bad enough way that he finished with a grunt after not half a minute. With some bitter pleasure, he saw that his release had spattered across the crisp sleeve of Archie’s uniform shirt.

Archie had noticed, as well. He turned away, shaking his arm and cursing.

“You’d have avoided that if you’d used your mouth,” Emmerich said after him, and received only a lewd gesture in return. He chuckled, tucking himself back into his trousers and remembering again why he liked Archie at all.

#

The first thing he got when he returned to the printing house was a blow across the face.

He had only just stepped through into the corridor from the narrow back stairs when the strike came, ringing down across his left cheek and leaving him dazed and reeling. He stumbled back against the door as Ezra moved back a step himself, heaving with breath and looking fierce and frantic.

“ _Where were you?”_

“Ezra—“

“ _Where did you go?”_

“For a wal—“

He was struck again, just as hard, left grimacing and working his jaw while his skin burned. He felt back behind him for the wall, to lean against while his vision cleared, and when Ezra’s hand came down again, Emmerich was ready. He caught the boy’s wrist and spun into the motion, yanking Ezra about and slamming him up against the door and holding him there. Doing so pressed them together, toe to chest, Emmerich’s barely mentionable achievement in height putting his mouth equal with the space just beneath Ezra’s nose. He could feel the boy’s soft panted breaths along his skin.

“Stop doing that,” Emmerich said, giving Ezra’s wrist a hard twist and a squeeze. Ezra made a sound in his throat, baring his teeth and keeping rigid in Emmerich’s grip, until he abruptly slumped back against the door. Startled at the change in countenance, Emmerich leaned back, releasing Ezra’s wrist.

There was silence between them for several moments, until Ezra drew in a soft breath. “I’ll not stop you if you go, just please—have the decency to tell me when you do,” he said quietly, never looking away from Emmerich’s eyes.

Emmerich hesitated, lost for a moment, and then quite suddenly understood. “You thought I wasn’t coming back.”

Ezra said nothing, but the tremble in his mouth said more than he could have. His eyes were still blazing and fierce, but they wavered when Emmerich let go of his wrists and slid his hands up to cup the edges of the boy’s face, pressing his thumbs against Ezra’s cheekbones.

“I would never do that to you,” Emmerich said. “Do you understand me, Ezra? Never.”

A long moment passed, then another. Emmerich kept smoothing his fingers along Ezra’s face, combing through strands of his hair, feeling the warmth of his skin and the trembling in his jaw.

“All right,” Ezra said softly, and reached up to catch at Emmerich’s wrists. “I believe you.”

“ _Ich bin froh, das zu hören,_ ” Emmerich said, and Ezra only smiled faintly and used his hold on Emmerich to move his hands away. The motion was quite firm, and Emmerich felt an uneasy shame creep over him. What had he been doing? Touching Ezra like that, as familiar as if they were lovers. He had gone to Archie to rid himself of just this problem, to shake it from his body and his mind. But how quickly it was returning, faced with Ezra like this.

Then Ezra leaned even closer, his hair tickling at Emmerich’s cheek as he turned his face down towards Emmerich’s shoulder, and sniffed at the collar of his shirt. Emmerich’s breath halted in his throat, and he eased it back out with only the slightest sound.

“You smell like the docks,” Ezra said, glancing up. His breath smelled sharp and bitter, as though he had been drinking something strong. “It’s terrible. Is that where you went?”

Emmerich nodded. He couldn’t explain what he had been doing, not now, when it had gotten Ezra worked up so. It was such a silly thing and embarrassing, on top of that. That he’d gone out to get his leg over with a man of the CC, who would arrest him on sight in daylight for the things that they did in the cover of night. Not that he would have told Ezra any of those details in the first place.

Ezra made a quiet sound then, and lifted a hand to Emmerich’s face. His skin felt raw there, already tender and swollen, even under Ezra’s gentle touch. They looked at each other for a few moments, paused together in the quiet dark of the printing house, still very close together against the door.

“I’m sorry,” Ezra said, gruffly, dropping his hand.

“You’ve a hard hit,” Emmerich said with as much levity as he could. “I’ll be having colors there tomorrow.”

“Would you like to hit me back?” Ezra asked, and so earnest about it that Emmerich laughed.

“No,” he said, and only just stopped himself from adding, _your face is far too lovely to strike._ He instead settled for putting his arm casually about Ezra’s neck and pulling him forward from the wall. “I think I’ll see to that cabinet in Luca’s quarters, instead. I’m sure there must be spirits in there.”

Ezra chuckled, and lost some of the tenseness in his shoulders. “There is,” he said. “Though none of it is much better than cordial.”

“Had a go at it yourself already?”

Ezra’s shoulders lifted and fell once. “I thought you weren’t coming back,” he said, quietly. Emmerich tightened his arm about Ezra’s shoulders and wished he knew how to apologize deeply enough.

#

Emmerich did have quite a tender area of purple and red along the side of his face the next morning, which he had to work around as he shaved in front of the spotty mirror with a straight-edge razor he’d gotten from Luca. But it was the least he deserved, he thought, for how upset Ezra had been. It would heal soon enough, and so too would the thin breach he had made between them. He hoped.

Ezra was standing with Luca outside his office when Emmerich found them, laughing together and speaking that same enthusiastic language of before. Emmerich hadn’t been altogether surprised when Ezra had proved himself capable at it, but he was beginning to wonder exactly why it was that Ezra was so versed in other tongues, especially those not sanctioned by the Order.

He clearly knew all three of the First Districts, and enough of several Thirds to hold conversations quite capably—as Emmerich had never said anything in Deute that Ezra didn’t appear to understand. Either he simply had a natural talent, or had been quite well educated. Emmerich had had less than a year of schooling himself, not even enough to learn to form his letters properly. He could read, somewhat, but it was always difficult and even more so in a language that was not originally his.

Ezra noticing Emmerich coming out of the washroom, and moved to his side almost right away.

“Think about it, Luca, all right?” he said as he did, and Luca only waved a hand dismissively and went out into the workroom.

“What—” Emmerich began, but Ezra shook his head.

“It’s nothing. Come on.”

They went up together to their small room, as the workers would soon be arriving to the printhouse and they were endeavoring to stay out of their sight. The fewer people who knew of their whereabouts, the better. Until either he or Ezra thought up a new idea for arming themselves, they were stuck passing the day together up here. Ezra looked to be taking up his book again, and Emmerich touched his arm before he could begin.

“How many languages do you know?” he asked.

“A few,” Ezra said, more tense about it than Emmerich had expected. Emmerich only knew the one, other than the one he’d been born speaking, and he had learned it from stumbling along the streets of the Kingshore, listening and desperate to understand before he was killed or arrested simply for opening his mouth.

“Where did you learn? It’s really quite impressive—”

“Just leave it, Emmerich, all right?” Ezra snapped. “It doesn’t matter.”

Emmerich put a hand to Ezra’s shoulder, and the boy flinched slightly beneath the touch. But he didn’t speak, and still wouldn’t look at him.

“I would tell you anything that you asked about me,” Emmerich said. Except, perhaps, about Archie. But that was simply for his own preservation. “I only hope that you do the same.”

Ezra bowed his head and was silent. Then he rose from his chair, and Emmerich thought for a moment that he would simply walk out of the room. But instead he went to the table and picked up the bottle they had brought up the night from Luca’s cabinet. He uncorked it, but did not drink. His back was mostly to Emmerich still, and only the edge of his face was visible.

“I told you that night at the brothel that my name was Lace,” he said at length. He lifted the bottle halfway to his lips, then set it down to the table again. “That was a lie. I don’t have a surname to truly call myself any longer. I’ve been disinherited from the peerage; my family’s name and their standing and wealth.”

It took him a moment, but once Emmerich understood, he quite suddenly understood everything. Every uncommon feature, every blurred piece about the other boy was suddenly brightening, sharpening. It was the difference, the uncrossable distance. “You’re...a lord.”

Ezra shook his head. “But I was intended for it, once,” he said. Emmerich watched as his fingers traced around the lip of the bottle. “A marquis, to be accurate. I never had the title, and I never will, now.”

“What happened?” Emmerich had never wanted to know something with such desperation in his entire life. “How are you...here?”

With a sigh, Ezra turned from the table, gripping the bottle now firmly by the neck. His shoulders were tense, his mouth set in a pressed line, and his eyes focused on the floor in front of him. 

“I was engaged,” he said, his voice tight, “to a girl from another wealthy family. On the night of…the night our engagement was to be officially announced, I was....discovered with her elder brother.”

It took a moment to understand. It often did with Ezra’s speech, because he spoke a language naturally that Emmerich had taken years to grasp.

Ezra seemed to think he hadn’t understood at all. “We were fucking,” he said, more plainly and more bitterly, “when I’d never even touched her at all. And of course, the scandal was very public. I was quickly disowned, to avoid further embarrassment. My family seems to have recovered from the indignity. I never have.”

“How long ago?” Emmerich asked, which seemed to surprise Ezra.

“Three years,” he answered. “I was sixteen.”

Ezra was indeed young, then. Even younger than Emmerich had expected—at least six years his junior. And he’d only had three years to become this good at life along the edge of the law, while Emmerich had almost five and was still not natural at it.

And his desires ran the same as Emmerich’s own. It was almost shameful to admit that it sent an expectant thrill through him. This was not an appropriate time for such things, with Ezra clearly wounded and troubled by having to speak of it, watching Emmerich with guarded, fierce eyes. He was still gripping the bottle with both hands, his knuckles gone white and hard against the dark glass.

“Say what you need to say and be done with it,” Ezra said then, tightly. He seemed to realize then, about the bottle in his hands, and he put it back on the table and clenched his fists at his sides instead. “I knew you had to find out sooner or later. I lost my entire life because of it, after all. It’s unpleasant, but I’ll not lie about it.”

“What do you expect to hear?” Emmerich said. “I’ve nothing to say about it.”

He heard Ezra take three measured breaths before he spoke again. “You don’t.”

Emmerich shook his head, holding Ezra’s gaze as he did. He wouldn’t permit himself to look away, in case Ezra saw it as a mark of unspoken disgust.

“We’ve been sleeping in the same bed and you’ve nothing to say,” Ezra said. He came one step nearer to where Emmerich sat on the floor, the sound of his boot distinct on the wood. “Nothing.”

“Not unless you’ve some disease I could’ve caught,” said Emmerich, and winced when Ezra’s face clearly said that he didn’t appreciate the poor humor.

“If you’ve nothing to say, we won’t mention this again,” Ezra said, in the kind of cold, dangerous voice that couldn’t come out of a lord’s mouth, disinherited or otherwise. It was the voice of a man who had fallen hard and gotten up stronger, tougher, and dangerous. It was Kegg’s man talking, not Ezra.

“All right,” Emmerich said. “But I’ll have you know that I’d have still slept in a bed with you if I’d known before. I’ll still do it now, if you’ll have it.”

The hard edge in Ezra’s face slipped, startled. “Why?”

“Because I trust you,” Emmerich said. He also hardly thought Ezra was going to waylay him in the middle of the night. Though if he did, he wouldn’t much mind. Emmerich rose to his feet then, moved across the small room to face Ezra at closer distance. “Because you’re the only man that I do. And because it doesn’t matter.”

Ezra looked quite lost and shaken, having lost the ferocity of his earlier words. “It doesn’t matter that I—“

“ _Nein, es spielt keine Rolle,_ ” Emmerich interrupted. To prove it, he offered out his hand.

A faint smile broke across Ezra’s face. “ _Danke,”_ he said, softly. He fit his palm against Emmerich’s, closing their fingers together. “You’re the only one who’s ever told me that.”

“And I meant it.” To prove it again, he pulled Ezra close. Just a firm embrace, nothing else, but he still felt Ezra go rigid against him. But after a moment he relaxed, his arms creeping around Emmerich’s back and catching in his shirt.

“ _Danke,_ ” he said again, his voice muffled in Emmerich’s shoulder. He was holding on as if afraid Emmerich would pull away, clutching at him with a painful grip. “ _Dankeschön_ , Emmerich.”

“ _Nichts zu danken,_ ” Emmerich said softly, and stroked one hand over the top of Ezra’s hair. Ezra shuddered and clung tighter, and Emmerich remembered that he was only nineteen, without a family left or anyone else—except for him.

“Lord Lace is a terrible name, anyway,” he said then, and Ezra laughed quietly against his neck.

“I suppose it is,” he said. The words were hot and damp against Emmerich’s skin, and he felt the movement of Ezra’s mouth. “Though it’s better than having none at all. Usually I say I’m called Smith, when I’m asked. I’m not certain of why I told you the other, when we met.”

“I’m glad of it,” said Emmerich. He thought he ought to let go of Ezra soon, but neither one of them was withdrawing from the other. “I’m glad to know it, to know you. It is still you, even taken away.”

Ezra did draw away from him then, but only far enough to be able to look into Emmerich’s eyes. “Would you like to address me as Earl of Dorshire, as well?” he said lightly, teasing. “That title I did have.”

“I wouldn’t,” Emmerich told him firmly. Ezra laughed again, his eyes on Emmerich in a way that felt as though something significant was settling between them—more than the reliance they already had accidentally forged, or the small amounts of trust they had bestowed on each other willingly. Emmerich had no name for it, but it touched a place deep within him that he had not felt since leaving his home all those years ago.


	4. The Thistledown

“ _Wo ist sein familie, Emery?_ ” Ezra asked as they lay together in the room above the printing house, each comfortable on their own side of the joined bed. They had not separated it again even after Ezra’s admission, and neither of them seemed inclined to make mention of doing so. The lantern was lit on the hearth and burning low, and Ezra was merely shapes and shadows even this close.

“ _Beerdigt,_ ” Emmerich said, and Ezra shifted and rolled over to face him. His hand moved across the space between them, and touched Emmerich gently on the wrist.

“ _Alle?”_

Emmerich nodded. Ezra was looking at him now, with that same genuine attentiveness that he often gave, the kind that Emmerich was unused to receiving. That someone cared enough to listen to him, to want to know things about him; his life, his family, where he had come from. He didn’t think about any of it often, didn’t like the memories and the sorrow that came with it, but Ezra had told him about his own wounded past and it seemed only fair.

“ _Meine Mutter..._ ” he began, and then stopped with the realization that Ezra had begun the conversation in Deute but might not actually be able to follow everything if it continued that way. It had been familiar to slip into the comfort of his own language, speaking without having to carefully construct everything in his mind before allowing it out. But he still wasn’t sure just how much Ezra knew, despite the education he would have had as the son of a lord. Emmerich couldn’t imagine this language had ever been part of his lessons.

“My mother died when I was just seven,” he continued instead. “She left myself, my younger sister and brother, my father. He was a good honest man, hard-working, and he knew how to provide for our family. But it was difficult for him to raise us alone. I was attending school then, but I stopped, to help at home.”

Emmerich turned his face up towards the ceiling, which he could not see in the dimness of the room. “Even then, we didn’t survive long. My father fell into debt, and we suffered for it. Justus and Odila were gone not far apart from each other, they were simply too young—one gone of disease and the other just of…well, we never had enough to eat. As for my father...eventually, his debts were the end of him.”

Ezra’s arm moved from Emmerich’s wrist, up along his arm and to his chest, carefully resting across Emmerich’s ribs. It was both comfortable and calming, and Emmerich found nothing too odd about it other than the way it made him much more aware of his own breathing under the heaviness of Ezra’s limb. Ezra’s forehead was tucked against his shoulder, and as he spoke his voice was warm and muffled into Emmerich’s shirtsleeve.

“Then how did you get here, to the Kingshore?”

“Bartered my way onto a merchant ship,” Ezra said. “She needed small repairs, I told them I could do some of it if they’d only take me out of the diocet with them. I didn’t care much where they were headed. I happened to get off ship here.”

“And then what?”

“And then...that’s where I stayed. I worked at the close, helped with merchant freight, loading and unloading and such. But it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, and what I couldn’t get with what I was paid, I had to steal. For a long time I hated it, because my father—“ Emmerich held his breath for a moment, then let it out carefully. “My father would have been disappointed in me for it.”

Ezra lifted his head and looked at him. “For living?”

“For not doing so honestly.”

“It’s a rare man that can do that,” Ezra said quietly. “You oughtn’t be ashamed.”

But Emmerich was, and terribly so. He had left some of his past unspoken, such as the way he had tried to help his father by getting down on his knees for a few collectors, despite his age at the time—which had even, sometimes, seemed a drawing point—and even then it hadn’t been enough. His father had still been robbed and murdered for his debts in his own workshop, and Emmerich had been so broken, so horrified, that he hadn’t been able to stay in the only home he’d known for even a fortnight afterwards.

That way of surviving hadn’t stopped once he’d stepped foot on the Kingshore, either. Canalcourt was a true city, not a village like Dachstrauβ, and it devoured anyone without the strength and will to resist it. Emmerich had nearly foundered, and it was only small bits of luck at opportune times that had kept him from coming out face-down in a filthy ditch in the rookeries. He hadn’t spoken a single acceptable language, he’d had no money and no manner in which to prove his adequate skills in handiwork. He’d had only the one crude ability that needed no words to demonstrate and was understood by anyone with blood in their body.

But he hadn’t needed to do any of that in years, not since joining Allister’s crew. The only man who touched him with any regularity now was Archie, and that was mutually wanted and pleasing. But he still remembered, still woke some nights with the memory of rough men and rougher hands, dark shadowed places and a foul taste in his mouth. There was a part of it that would never quite leave him, and there was no manner in which he could explain it to Ezra and be understood. 

Against his shoulder, Ezra snuffled and wriggled closer, sighing in a drowsy manner that made Emmerich smile. He would let the boy sleep like this if he wanted, tucked close against him, if only because it was quite the opposite of how he’d thought Ezra would be with him now. He had expected, after Ezra had revealed himself fully, that he would become careful and distant in the wake of it, ashamed of what Emmerich knew. But it seemed to have compressed the space between them instead, as though Ezra’s desperate hold on his secret had been a last barricade. And with it known, Ezra was unexpectedly affectionate—at ease with Emmerich’s acceptance of him.

#

Emmerich was awoken by a loud row going on just outside the door. One voice was clearly Ezra’s and the other belonged to a young woman, and as Emmerich rolled over and groped his way out of the bedding, he became quite sure it was Luca’s daughter. Beyond the window the sky was still dark and reddish with fire-smoke; not quite yet morning and no longer night. An uncomfortable hour to be woken at, and Emmerich wondered why Ezra was awake now at all. Vena was likely returned from her mysterious place of employ, and perhaps that was the cause of all the shouting. It had clearly set Ezra at unease before, that she had lied about it, and so poorly at that.

When Emmerich pushed the door open and peered into the hall, Ezra and Vena were not an armslength apart, leaning into each other’s faces and still exchanging unfamiliar heated words that Emmerich couldn’t understand a single syllable of. Vena was carrying an oil lamp and Ezra was holding a bit of rushlight that was burning near to its clips in the iron holder, and both filled the hall with smoky orange light. It was surprising that Luca had not heard them himself and come out as well, but perhaps it was for the best that he did not. Vena was the more wound up of the two, nothing but anger in her face and fierceness in her words.

Emmerich moved to Ezra’s side and the boy faltered at once, glancing at him and winding down, his fervor ebbing away. Vena snapped out another few words at him but Ezra seemed to have lost the fight even before Emmerich had come out into the corridor, and he pressed himself slightly into Emmerich’s shoulder as if to glean strength from him. Vena’s eyes moved sharply between them, and Emmerich wondered what it was she was seeing there.

“Did we wake you?” Ezra spoke quietly into the ringing silence left by the argument, and Emmerich shook his head.

“No,” he lied, and could tell Ezra knew it. “What’s the matter here?”

“There’s nothing,” Vena said. Her dark eyes glittered in the light of her lamp as she stared at Emmerich. Blocks of light stretched across her face against blue shadows. “Nothing that’s any of your concern.”

“Vena,” Ezra said, his tone a warning.

“Nor is it any of yours!” she spat at him, but there was a tremble to her mouth. Emmerich saw it plainly, but Ezra either did not or was too worked up to pay any close mind to it.

“You think I won’t go to your father, but I will,” he said.

“You’d only be hurting us,” said Vena. “We don’t do well here, Ezra, you must have seen! Papa may have told you he prefers to live here, but he _doesn’t_ , we lost the house to his debts, and what is it to you if I help to keep this place from becoming another payment to some debt collector? It has to be done, and Papa can only take so much of it!”

“If you had only _told_ me—“ Ezra began hotly, and Emmerich had the thought that they were simply restarting their same row, only in another language this round of it. Vena stamped her foot, setting the floorboards creaking, and Emmerich cast another look towards the door that lead to Luca’s quarters.

“Told you _how_?” Vena demanded. “You always disappear, for months at a time, we’ve not even seen you for nearly a year now—“ 

“I’ve my own problems as well!” Ezra said. “You can’t have gotten in such trouble in only a year, you weren’t so bad off then—“

Ezra voice was rising with every word, and Emmerich put his hand to his arm that held the rushlight, gripping at him gently.

“It won’t matter if you go to Luca or not,” he said, softly. “Carrying on like this, you’ll wake him soon enough.”

Though the words were meant for Ezra, Vena heard them as well, for she pressed her lips together and the lantern in her hand shook.

“Ezra,” she said, very quietly, looking downwards at her shoes. They were thin and muddied and patched beneath the hem of her skirt. “Don’t do this, not now. If you help me here, I’ll try to help you.”

“With what?” said Ezra crossly, clearly not in the proper humor for compromising or even listening. 

“You’ve said you have problems, you’ve told me you’re in trouble,” Vena said. “It must be worse than usual, as you’ve been hiding here for days. I can only imagine it’s with your...employer.”

“Partly,” Ezra muttered.

Vena let out a breath, clenching her fist against the top of her lantern. She glanced between Ezra and Emmerich again, mouth set. She seemed as though she were weighing something within her mind, with some difficulty.

“Come to the Thistledown today, then,” she said at length. “All sorts of things happen there; sit long enough and I’m sure you’ll overhear something useful to you.”

“Fine,” said Ezra tersely, while Emmerich startled at the name she had said. He knew of the place, had been there on occasion while working for Allister, though Ezra clearly was not similarly familiar with it. Had he been, there might have been another row starting.

#

The Thistledown was set across the river, the way to it through an even more unpleasant part of the city than where Emmerich and Ezra had spent that first night on the edge of the rookery. They had to cross Moxmill Bridge into Peddleweight, where houses were hardly better than bits of wood leant up against each other, low little hovels with greasy fires burning in make-shift hearths, leaking black smoke low into the air. Despite the affluence of the Order, there were parts of the city it had not yet dared to touch, even after its several-decade governance here. South of the river was much unchanged from what it must have been like before the city was converted, and reminded Emmerich of the aughterland villages around where he had grown up—poor, crowded, and dismal. 

Moving from Peddleweight to St Falgars improved the quality of the construction to thicker wood and some stone—it no longer appeared as though one good shove would send the entire quarter collapsing in on itself—and a few buildings even risked a first or second story. The streets here in the borough were thick with mud and the smell and sound of animals. Scrawny goats and stocky pigs were led through the muck by weary crofters, and frantic geese honked as they flapped from corner to corner, disturbed by heavy carts bogging and sloshing through puddles. The people here were colored as dingy grey and brown as the sky above them and the streets below, moving about in raggedy coats and worn boots, rough faces and hard eyes beneath woolen caps and scarves. 

Emmerich was the one who lead them, as he knew roughly where the Thistledown was; at least what area of St Falgars it lay in. Vena had gone on ahead of them in the early morning hours, telling them an address but nothing much further than that. Emmerich was of an opinion that she might be hoping they’d be unable to find it at all, as many of the streets here were unnamed or had had their signs stolen long ago for use as kindling. But Emmerich had been there and remembered well enough, and it wasn’t very long at all before he and Ezra came upon it, set on a junction of two narrow streets.

The Thistledown was a stout three-story building of rough wood, yellowish windows, and the laundered rags flapping out from windows and railings. A launderers was what it somewhat convincingly appeared to be from the outside, the cover it gave itself to avoid the Order shutting it down. Though there were hardly any men of the CC ever on this side of the river, and it was even more rare for them to enforce their laws here. The south boroughs did not welcome their presence and swelled up against them, as though they had no mind to be infested with unwelcome regulations and ways of life.

The women who worked here—Emmerich could hardly call them girls, though most of them were not much more than that—were thin and bony, not the well-kept flushed judies of the Prince and Rose. They looked around with old eyes and stretched smiles beneath painted lips. Their clientele were rougher, harsher, and demanding men with only a few coin and determination to get all they could out of what they paid. 

“What is this,” Ezra said in a taught voice as they came to stand before the brothel’s doors, looking up at the greasy, lamp-lit windows through the brown of the air and the stink of the mud.

“What does it look like, Ezra,” Emmerich said.

Ezra spat out a word in a language Emmerich did not know, and then he pushed forward and marched through the door of the Thistledown, nearly knocking aside a young girl in an old stained dress as he did. Emmerich followed him peaceably, and cast an apologetic look to the girl as he did. Her eyes were only hard and careless in return, as he clearly did not look the sort to be spending any amount of coin there, in his own tattered and worn clothes, with his growth of beard and own air of desperation about him. He was not much better-off than these women even now, had once done the same sorts of things to survive, and perhaps it was still recognizable in him. 

An errant goose flapped into Emmerich’s path as he approached the door, and he nudged it out of the way with his boot and got a vicious peck for his efforts. Once inside, the brothel’s interior was dank and dim, full of smoke and steam. Several large dolly tubs sodden clothes in a sort of large still room, to the left of a thick-hewn stair. To the right was a small foyer of low couches, meant for men to smoke and drink and chose their pleasure. There were a few women hanging about here, though this appeared to be an hour of very little business and more of their legitimate work. The dresses they wore laced in the front and were cut low below the fabric of the blouses beneath, and always reminded him of the Dirndlegewand of his home. Though these were clearly made this way to entice, to call attention to the woman’s body, especially as they bent forward to beat at the tubs with their possing-sticks.

Emmerich caught no real attention from any of them, and he still supposed it was because he was not acting the part of a client. It was easy enough to locate Ezra, with his being the only loud male voice rising inside the place. Clearly he had found Vena already, and they’d taken up their row again. Emmerich found them both at the back of the warm still room, the air damp and heavy with steam. The large windows opened to the street to allow some of it out, which also brought in the stench of the gutters. Ezra had Vena by the shoulders, gripping her hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

“Is this what you _do_?” Ezra was demanding of her. “Don’t tell me it’s all washing out clothes!”

“I don’t do it for your _approval_ , Ezra!” Vena shouted. She was red in the face and her fists were clenched at her sides. “I oughtn’t have even told you at all, I just _knew_ you’d have a fit over it!”  
“I rather think I’m entitled to, if you’ve turned yourself into some sort of...of left-handed wife!” Ezra shouted back, and was rewarded for it by a quick and vicious slap across his face from Vena’s hand. The strike whipped Ezra’s head towards his shoulder, and the ringing sound of it stopped the work and the conversations of all of the women in the still room. Emmerich paused in his way across to them, stopped by the sudden hush and startled himself by what Vena had done.

Ezra heaved in a sudden breath, drawing back his shoulders and turning his head about again. Then without a word, he turned on his heel and stormed from the room, pushing unseeingly past Emmerich and heading for the brothel’s doors. Vena, in turn, fled into the building, disappearing through a narrow door at the back of the still room. After a moment, Emmerich chose to follow her.

He found her in a cupboard, the door ajar, sitting on an upturned wooden bucket amongst dusty shelves of odds and ends. She was not weeping as Emmerich had somewhat expected—instead she muttered furiously to herself and every so often kicked out at the cupboard wall with her foot, causing the shelves to rattle and squeak. Emmerich came to the door of the cupboard and rapped on it with his knuckles to catch her attention, which he received immediately.

“What do _you_ want?” Vena said fiercely, glaring at him from over her shoulder. “Come to tell me how awful I am as well?”

“Vena, listen to me,” Emmerich said, and then, after the look she gave him, “no, listen to me _speak_. The way that I do.”

“You’ve an accent, so,” Vena sniffed, rubbing at her nose.

“So. I know what it is to be an immigrant here; how difficult it is. I know what it is to do this.”

Vena’s laugh was sharp and mirthless. “Of _course_ you do,” she said. “I’m certain Ezra told you to come and—“

“Ezra told me nothing. He’s gone outside to clear his head.” Emmerich was reasonably sure Ezra hadn’t gone far, and that he would come back. If he wasn’t of a mind to, then....well, it was fortunate, and perhaps strange, that Emmerich felt more at ease here than he would have if Ezra had left him alone at Chambért’s shop. Working for Allister had not left him a stranger to houses of prostitution, and as he was not tempted by anything inside of them they were a familiar setting that he did not especially care for, but at least understood.

Vena had only tightened her mouth at him and crossed her arms across her slim body, one bony shoulder poking through the worn fabric of her blouse. She was so very young, but no younger than Emmerich had been himself when he had begun this very same thing. He did wish it was different, but so often it simply couldn’t be.

“Ezra cares for you, it’s plain to see,” Emmerich added, more gently, and Vena scoffed a bit.

“Too much; I never _asked_ for him to play at being my brother, though he certainly acts it,” she said. “It’s none of his concern how I employ myself, and _he_ does far worse.” 

Emmerich was tempted, for a moment, to ask of what sort of worse things Ezra did. Killed men, he imagined, as he could not quite forget the coldness with which Ezra had told Chambért they would shoot his nephew if he did not cooperate. But that was the way of it, living as they did, and Emmerich was only fortunate that he’d not yet had to do the same. Before this all ended, he was certain he would no longer be able to claim that his hands were clean of blood. 

He took a bucket for himself then and upended it, while Vena watched him with some distrust. They had not met on favorable terms, nor had any of their encounters since been much better. Truly, their only real connection was through Ezra.

“You do it to help your father,” he said, and Vena nodded stiffly. “As I did.”

Vena’s countenance lifted somewhat. “And?”

“And it wasn’t of any use. I did these things, and it wasn’t enough.”

Her fists clenched atop her thin knees. “It _is_ enough,” she insisted. “What I bring back to Papa keeps us from losing what we have left.”

“Do you think he shares the entirety of his burdens with you?” Emmerich said, and Vena frowned and stared away into the back of the cupboard. “Whatever troubles your father has, you can’t mend them with doing this. He wouldn’t want this for you. No father would.”

“But then...what can I do?” Vena said, her shoulders hunching. “I can’t simply do nothing.”

“I never found the answer to that myself,” Emmerich said, twisting his hands together between his knees. “But I would like to help you, if I could.”

Vena peered at him strangely. “Would you,” she said. “All Ezra’s done is shout at me about it.” 

“So I’ve heard,” Emmerich said, and Vena offered him a wry smile. She watched him for a moment longer, and then pressed her palms against her legs and sighed.

“You’re not very much like him, you know,” she said. “He’s quite thick sometimes. He can’t see why there’s no avoiding doing certain things, thinks that we should all be better than what we’ve no choice but to do. As if there’s some other way to live without sinking.”

 _Because he is a lord, and some part of him still doesn’t fully understand_ , Emmerich thought but did not say. If Vena did not know Ezra’s origins, it would not be Emmerich’s place to tell of it.

“He does mean well,” he said instead, for that he was sure of. “Your family is dear to him.”

“And you?” said Vena. “What does my family mean to you?”

“The same as it does to him,” Emmerich said. “Whatever is important to him is equally my concern, at least for now. We’ve—the trouble we’re in, well...we’ve got to survive together, and you and your father are part of what he needs to do that. It’s your sake for my own.”

“Well,” Vena said, and nearly smiled. “At least you’re honest about it.”

#

It was long minutes before Ezra came back to them, grim and silent at first, refusing to look at Vena and hardly even at Emmerich either. They had taken to a shabby settee in the small front area, a sort of open parlor, before the stair. Emmerich had tried to question Vena in vain about her employment here, receiving very little in the way of answers. He was mostly doing it for Ezra’s sake, which perhaps Vena realized—thus her silence on the subject.

Ezra only made the atmosphere between them far more tense, and there was very little conversation between them all once he had taken a seat to Emmerich’s right, placing himself as far from Vena as he could. Emmerich was unsure of what it was they were even doing, here at the moment—he knew that Vena’s promise to help them had not interested Ezra so much as learning where she worked. He was not sure how Vena could have helped to begin with, as even though men on the wrong side of the law often came here, it was unlikely that any of them could be useful to them. It would not be wise to spread the knowledge of their predicament too widely.

A few minutes had passed when a willowy young man came down the stair. He wore a loose linen shirt the color of rust, hanging open at the chest, and his trousers were dark and clung tightly against his legs, as though made for a smaller man. He spotted the three of them upon the settee and came to them, swaying his hips as he moved.

“Oh, Adia,” he said to Vena, and ruffled the top of her dark hair. “Who’s this you’re entertaining?” 

Vena made a huffing sound through her teeth. “You—“ she began, but the boy leant right over her and offered his hand out to Emmerich, who was closest to him. His face was elegant, perhaps even prettier than Ezra’s, with full pink lips and grey eyes, pale skin beneath the grime and dirt. His golden hair hung about his face in lank curls. He couldn’t have been much older than Vena, or much younger than Ezra. Despite the youth of his face and adolescent slant to his body, there was a hardness in his eyes, the same resigned detachment that was in Vena’s, in all of the women there.

“Lilin Gedfrey,” he said. Despite the soft look of him, his hand was callused and hard when Emmerich took it. 

“You work here as well?” Ezra said, the first words he had said since returning inside. He sounded surprised, and Emmerich knew why. He had never heard of a man being employed at this type of work before. And the only thing he could think of was that had he known about Lilin, he might not have visited Archie so often. It was a terribly ill-placed thought and he felt ashamed for it, but there was a heat creeping up from his collar nonetheless.

“Oh, he only lives here,” Vena said, still eyeing Lilin with exasperation. “Pays his rent in cleaning and cooking. Yet he still manages to do very little of the work he’s meant to, as he’s always working on _other things.”_

“It’s not my fault if some men don’t want a girl,” Lilin said with a laugh. He drew a hand down his delicate shoulder, traced two fingers slowly down across the center of his pale chest, in the open space left by his shirt. He caught Ezra staring at him, watching the movement, and his lips pulled into a smile. “For those ones, I’m here.”

Ezra swayed forward slightly, lamplight bright in his widened eyes. Emmerich coughed, clearing his throat loudly, and Lilin leaned back. He was still smiling, still watching at Ezra, who seemed near captivated by him. Vena only looked irritated.

“ _Lilin,_ ” she said. “Stop trying to charm everyone you meet. Most men only favor you because you look so much like a girl.”

Lilin’s pink mouth curved further and he leant forward, planting one hand on the frayed arm of the settee and using the other to reach forward to cup his fingers around the front of Vena’s thin blouse.

“None of these on me,” he said, and Vena leant forward herself, to reach in between Lilin’s legs and take firm hold of what was there.

“Going to be none of _these_ on you, either,” she said, with a light squeeze of her fingers, “if you keep at it.”

“ _Vena_ ,” Ezra said faintly, looking shocked, and if he had known the girl since she was twelve than Emmerich could see why. Both Vena and Lilin laughed, and took their hands off each other.  
“He calls you by that,” Lillin said with something of a smirk. “He must be a special one, then.”

“Not hardly,” Vena said. “Lilin, go back to work—where you’re _meant_ to be—or at the very least find some man and take yourself upstairs. Make yourself useful, is what I mean, as you’re not wanted here.” 

“Hm,” said Lilin, his gaze flickering to Ezra once more. Then he laughed. “I’m afraid these are the only men here.”

“And they don’t want you,” Vena replied promptly. “I’ll call for Miss Ingsbel, Lilin, I really will, and she’ll have you out on your ear.”

“Oh, _all right_ ,” Lilin said. He flicked at Vena’s hair once more before turning to leave, though his eyes lingered on Ezra for a moment before he did. Emmerich pressed his tongue hard against the backs of his teeth to keep from saying anything out of place.

“Miss Ingsbel?” Ezra spoke up. The name had a slight familiarity to Emmerich, though he could not place it.

“The procuress here,” said Vena. 

“Do you think I might speak with her?” Emmerich asked, and both Ezra and Vena looked to him. Ezra’s countenance was startled and somewhat irate, but Vena’s expression was much harder. Yet, she didn’t appear to have an argument against it.

“Fine, I suppose,” she said. “She’ll be in her office, first door at the top of the stair.”

#

Miss Ingsbel was a slight, dark-haired woman of some five and thirty years. Emmerich found her seated behind a small davenport in the room that Vena had pointed him towards, little better than a narrow corridor wedged behind a door at the top of the stair. When he entered the room, she had barely glanced up; only kept on writing in a large ledger with a rather fancy and incongruent brass dip-pen.

“Come in all the way and close the door,” she said. Her voice was soft and surprisingly sweet, though very firm. Emmerich came in all the way and closed the door. It was only then that Miss Ingsbel looked up at him.

“Hm,” she said, sitting back somewhat in her chair. “I was not expecting you, whoever you are.” 

“No, I suppose not,” Emmerich agreed. “I only—I just wished to ask about one of your girls. Vena.”

“I suppose you mean Adia,” said Miss Ingsbel. “As that’s how she’s called.”

“Then, yes,” Emmerich said. “I meant her.”

Miss Ingsbel put the dip-pen down to the side of the ledger, and folded her hands across the pages. “I must inform you that I do not sell my girls to clients, I simply won’t hear of it.”

“Oh, no, you’ve misunderstood me,” Emmerich said hastily. “I’ve no interest in—Vena is a friend, only a friend.”

Miss Ingsbel’s brow lifted. “Well then. Mister...?”

“Mandelbrauss.”

“What a mouthful,” Miss Ingsbel said with some distaste. “Your given name, then.”

“Emmerich.”

“Somewhat better.” Miss Ingsbel rose from her desk and came about to him. She was dressed simply in blues, which were quite flattering to her darker complexion, the near ink-color of her hair and umber of her eyes. “If you’ve no interest in her as a woman, Emmerich, why are you here?”

“I only wanted to know of her well-being,” Emmerich said, stammering slightly over his words. The procuress came up only to his shoulder, but she had an air of cold fierceness about her that Emmerich did not want to cross. “How long had she been employed here?”

“Just over seven months.” Miss Ingsbel considered him from beneath heavy eyelashes. “But you would know that, being a friend.”

“Well, no, I—,” Emmerich decided that it was quite useless, lying to this woman. “I’ve only just recently met her. But she means a great deal to someone...whom I care about.”

“Sounds complicated indeed,” said Miss Ingsbel. “But I assure you, she is as well taken care of as is possible to be, in a place such as this.”

“In a place such as this.”

Miss Ingsbel’s gaze grew sharper. “I’m well aware of the business that I run, Mr Mandelbrauss, and what it is. But I also endeavor to take care of these women, and to keep them safe. This is a profession that will always be practiced, and I may as well look out for as many as I am able, while I hold this position.” 

Emmerich did not inquire as to how she had come to hold the position, as he thought he already might know. He had looked into her eyes and seen. “And how do you keep them safe?” he asked instead, and something of a smile crossed over Miss Ingsbel’s lips.

“Would you like to come closer to see?” she said, and Emmerich was quite sure he did not want to. But nevertheless, Miss Ingsbel stepped very near to him, her hand going to her layered skirts. Emmerich had only a moment to take in a breath before there was the unmistakable press of a pistol against his belly, cold metal flashing between them.

“You must not think us easily frightened because of our profession, or sex,” said Miss Ingsbel. “Perhaps you are used to establishments of the north side, where procurers have as much sympathy for their wards as an orange-girl for her fruits. I assure you it is not so, here. We live hard lives together and we look out for each other.” 

“I—I meant no offense.”

“No, you didn’t.” The touch of the pistol disappeared, and Emmerich allowed himself to exhale again. “Nor did I mean to shoot you. Still, the effect is quite the same, isn’t it?”

“I think I...ought to go,” Emmerich said.

“As it pleases you,” said Miss Ingsbel, her pistol vanishing back into her skirts. Emmerich took steps towards the door, his eyes fixed on Miss Ingsbel. Even though she had proclaimed no ill will towards him, he would not turn his back on anyone he knew to be holding a weapon. She only watched him with a slight smile, a tilt to her head and her fingertips steepled together, upside-down, at her waist. She did not move from her position as Emmerich got into the corridor outside and pulled the door shut between them. 

For a moment he stood there, hands pressed to the worn wood of the door, unsure of exactly what had just transpired. He did not know if he had made an enemy of her, or earned her esteem. He hoped for the latter, but he had never before met a woman quite like Miss Ingsbel. He was even, perhaps, a little bit afraid of her.

Though he did now feel as though Ezra had little to worry about over Vena’s safety here, and he was sure the boy would appreciate that if nothing else. Emmerich turned back to the stairs, intent on going back to Ezra and telling him of his encounter with Miss Ingsbel. He did not have to go far to find him, for as soon as he went around the corner he found Ezra and Lilin speaking to each other at the foot of them.

Lilin stood with hips canted out, hands hooked in the waistband of his trousers, closer to Ezra than was truly necessary. Ezra was smiling, one arm draped carelessly around the banister and the carved post of the end tucked against his shoulder, leaning there. Their voices were quiet, and Emmerich was not near enough to hear their words. They were not touching, but their eyes did not linger entirely on each other’s faces, and Lilin’s attire was quite far from modest.

The two were likely of an age, and even though Lilin was some kind of whore, perhaps they were well suited to each other. They clearly got on well together and Emmerich had seen the way Ezra’s attention had been captured when Lilin had been touching himself, speaking of fucking men. If this was the kind of thing that excited Ezra, then...Emmerich had no business interfering. They did make a pretty sight together, one that Emmerich couldn’t look at for long. 

He did not have to. Lilin clasped Ezra by the shoulder and drew him away from the stair, back towards the still room. Ezra followed him readily, his own hand falling to Lilin’s shoulder in turn. Emmerich descended the last flight of stairs in time to see them disappear behind the wall, into the steam and quiet murmurs of the women at work. Emmerich went in the opposite direction then, making his way back to the room beyond the stairs, the dingy back area where men smoked and drank and generally partook of all other illegal activities available within the house, other than the services of the women. This was where he had spent his time in the very few occasions he had been here before, to meet with men Allister had sent him to receive packages or letters from. It was not often he had been sent here, as Allister had done very little business south of the river.

The room was empty now, filled only with shadows and a lingering haze. The rough curtains were drawn before the windows, and Emmerich went to one at the very back of the room and pulled it aside. Out the dark glass he could only see flickering torches of the street behind—burning a thick and greasy oil, not the bright gas of the river’s north side. He rested his hands on the sill and pressed his forehead to the cool surface, felt the thick whorls of the panes against his skin.

This had been harmless in the beginning, when Ezra had been nothing but a handsome young man that pleased Emmerich to look at, but they were tied together now, surviving alongside each other. Now it was dangerous, foolish, and wretched. Despite what Ezra had confessed to him about his own desires, Emmerich had not spoken of his own, as he was afraid that Ezra might only see him as something convenient if he did. It was not how he wanted Ezra to treat him, the same way men always had—as little more than a way to satisfy their basest desires. Emmerich could not bear that from him, as he had from so many others.

Archie, by his own words, cared nothing much for men, only for the agreeable activities that could happen between them. After all, he’d a wife and was clearly pleased with her as well, seeing as they’d nearly four children between them. There had been boys back in Emmerich’s village, but what Emmerich had done with them in the rough and ungainly encounters of youth was hardly a thing to cherish. And what he had done with the older men there was even less so. If he did not hope in Ezra, there would be no disappointment in how much the boy would be unwilling to give back to him.

But still, Ezra was the only man Emmerich had ever met who appeared overtly taken with other men, and other men alone.

And perhaps there was Lilin, but Vena was right—he looked awfully like a girl.

Emmerich sighed and lifted his head away from the window pane. The coarse curtain had fallen over his back and trapped him inside with the dry smell of dust and the cold air that was seeping through the glass, and he was uncertain of how long he had been standing there. They had come here to this place for a purpose, after all, and it was nothing to do with what he had been thinking of. If he let Ezra become such a distraction like this, he was likely to wind them up both at the noose, for one breach of the law or another.

Just as he was putting his hand to the edge of the curtain to draw it back, Emmerich heard footsteps and the sound of several low voices enter the small back room. He paused, thinking it might appear odd if he suddenly emerged from nowhere upon them. In places like this, men were often more wary than usual, watchful of strangers or those who might carry word of their disreputable business elsewhere. Emmerich did not want to be mistaken for an enemy, especially one that had concealed himself in something of a suspicious way.

He was trying to think up a way in which he could make the men aware of his presence without alarming them, when the words of their muttered conversation began to impress upon him. He was sure he had heard Staard’s name spoken, as well as the name of his erstwhile employer Kegg. The men appeared to be speaking of what had occurred at the Prince and Rose the week prior.

“I’ve heard they’ve marked that nasty little rotter Ezra for it,” said one of the men, and Emmerich drew further back into the curtain. The cold of the glass pressed against his shirt and soaked through to his skin, and he tried to still his breath inside his chest as he gripped onto the windowsill.

“Not surprising, that,” said a second, a voice roughened and scratched by years of smoke and spirits. “Was only a matter of time before he turned on the lot of them, I always said.”

“Always heard meself he was a right downey bugger,” a third man agreed.

These words, about Ezra—Emmerich couldn’t believe they could be about his Ezra, the same boy he knew and shared a bed with, however chaste that sharing might be. They spoke of him as they would a biting insect, or a diseased cur in the street to be kicked and spat upon. Emmerich held very still within the curtain, hoping the men would come no closer to him. He heard chairs pull out some distance into the room, creaking as bodies lowered into them, and smelt the bitter aroma of tobacco even though the musty curtain.

It appeared as though Emmerich had not been noticed at all, though there was no telling if or when he might be. Holding still and silent here until they’d gone again was what he could only hope for, especially as they knew about himself and Ezra. Or perhaps only about Ezra—he hadn’t heard his own name mentioned at all. He had never been of any import before this, perhaps it was still the same now.

“He’ll be dealt with, right enough,” said the first man. There were at least three of them, perhaps even more that had not yet spoken. Emmerich was glad he had kept himself behind the curtain, as he was quite outnumbered and might not have been overlooked by such a group. “As soon as they find where the whelp’s hiding out, he won’t be nobody’s concern. Now, Bartho, let’s hear of the rest of it.”

There came a soft squeak as a chair was moved in across the floor. “There’s a cargo headed in, I hear,” said the voice of the second man, presumably called Bartho. “A shipment coming in from Ginneaune in three days’ time. Now that that lot’s distracted by their little traitor, we’ll take it for ourselves.”

The third man spoke. “What’s it of, then?”

Before the answer came, there was a slow creak of wood, as if the speaker was leaning heavily forward on the table.

“Some ammunitions, spirits and the usual things; but I heard they’ve a crate of Royal-made pistols, come from Acllaum. Smuggled out, but real fine-like. A whole crate, imagine it! If we could get our hands on those, have them for ourselves, we’d have ourselves a bit of leverage in the world as it were.”

“Who’s it come in by?” the third man asked. “Reliable?”

“It’s to come in with the Frand, that’s the best reliable there is,” said Bartho. 

Something of a rush went through Emmerich, starting low in his belly and flooding through his limbs, filtering out through his fingers and toes. This was certainly what they had come here for. Pistols could be an asset, if they could get hold of those as well, but the most appealing aspect was the knowledge that this cargo being spoken of contained ammunition. It was what he and Ezra needed the most. 

“Agreed then,” said the second man, his roughened voice bringing Emmerich back to what he was listening to.

“Now as we’re here, I’d rather like some nicer company than you lot,” said Bartho, and the other two must have assented in some way, as Emmerich heard chairs moving across the wood and the sounds of feet upon the floor. He risked a slight movement to the side, to level his eye with the narrow parting between the curtains. Through them, he caught a glimpse of a dull red-brown coat and a length of dark, stringy hair pulled back with a bit of cloth. The other men were too far ahead to see clearly, but Emmerich imagined that one was perhaps fair-haired. 

Once they were gone from the room, Emmerich still waited several minutes before stepping out. His hands were shaking a bit from the excitement, and he clenched them into the hem of his coat until he was breathing steadier. Now, he had to find Ezra.

Emmerich half expected to need to go knocking on doors in the upstairs and drag him out of a bed, but he found the boy back in the still room, by himself. He was standing before the windows, looking out into the gloom of the dismal street, pulled close into his own body as though he were afraid to touch anything or to occupy too much of the space around him. Heavy steam moved about him and dampened his hair, flattening it against his face.

“Ezra,” Emmerich said, coming up to stand at his side—perhaps closer than he needed to be, for Ezra startled a bit and had to lean to the side to meet his eyes. _Nasty little rotter,_ Emmerich heard a rough voice say inside his head, and ignored it. “I’ve heard something.”


	5. The Close

Surcinger Close sat at the northern end of the city, so that the merchant freight from ships could be loaded into barges and ferried as far southward through the city as it needed to go, or taken out into the countryside to smaller towns and aughterlands. Some freight still came in by water-ship at the river main, through the tidal waters of the Lowon to the docks in Culls Downing, but Emmerich had never worked there and knew nothing of it. Shipyards were a different world from the close; there was no mixing of the two and they bred entirely different men, with very little patience for each other. But the close had been as near to a home as he’d had in the Kingshore for the first years he’d been in the city; he’d known the men there as not a family, but certainly something welcoming enough. 

Emmerich wondered if any of them would recognize him still—if in the time he’d been away he had been forgotten. He had only returned here once or twice in the five years since joining Allister’s crew, and that had been only on errands he had been sent on, so there had been no time to waste in revisiting old acquaintances. But his life at the close had been the start of who he had become in this city, certainly he owed that to it. His pay had been a copper half-peg a day, sometimes more if the work had been particularly grueling. Where he had lived, the cheapest he could find to put a roof over his head and one meal a day, cost nearly six times that a week. His other method of employing himself had given him anywhere from a half-peg to several full ones with each go at it, which was why he had returned again and again to the gritty stone alleys and cold shadowed corners of Pennygrand and Havesbonnet, where he could always find men searching for what he had to offer. 

Occasionally, he had picked a pocket or two. Riskier, more difficult, and certainly with more chance of a truly mortal punishment, but oftentimes he could live for a week or more off of a single cut purse. And one day he had tried to steal off a man named Uxilord; a man who worked for Edwin Allister. He’d been caught, of course—caught before he’d ever cut the cords of the moneypurse, because all Allister’s men knew how to tell at once that they were being had over. Emmerich had been shaken down well himself, and had thought himself lucky to escape with nothing more than a scare and a threat and a swollen eye. It was only later that he learned his handiwork had actually impressed Uxilord, and when Alister had needed a new quick-handed errand boy, it had been Emmerich they had come to find. 

But from his years there, Emmerich knew the close well—not only the arrangement of the berths, but the way daily work went on within its busy boundaries. He knew how to work the great metal lifts that moved up and down the towering berths, knew how to work the clamps that held the ships into their scaffold-arches, merchant and missionary alike, knew the path of the freightbarges in and out, knew how much weight they safely held and how to tie and untie the knots that moored them, knew the cranes that could hoist the heavy loaded pallets when a crank was worked by hand. And he knew the system of the canals themselves, the way they joined and crossed and splintered throughout the city. The entire place was a familiar one to him, comforting in its ways.

Ezra had never been to the close at all; never seen it nor smelt it nor imagined it, and again Emmerich had felt pride and confidence strong in his chest, that he had such an ability to be an asset. Ezra would have had no reference in which to go about even beginning a plan. The men at the Thistledown had said the Frand was coming to dock in three days’ time, which had given him and Ezra a wealth of time to prepare what they ought to do. Though in the end, their idea was quite simple and adaptable, and would quite depend on what their unknowing benefactors would do.

Emmerich had quickly decided it would be far safer to not attempt to take the cargo themselves directly from the ship. After all, they were one of three possible parties who had interest in the contents, who might be arriving there to retrieve it. It had originally been meant for Kegg, and if his man Staard still had an interest in it there was potential for a very dangerous run-in here with the very men Emmerich and Ezra were trying to avoid. So they would keep themselves subtle, watching from a distance, to see who arrived for it first. And then if it was Bartho and his men who secured it, he and Ezra would relieve them of it in turn. 

The impression Emmerich had made of those men at the Thistledown was not one of crafty or dangerous criminals, just rather a few ragtag outlaws who had happened to hear of something that could help their fortune. Rather like themselves. He had no real desire to harm them, only take from them what was not theirs to begin with. He did not think there would be much difficulty in it. Perhaps it was unjust, but there was very little fairness that survived at this level of the world. 

The morning of came with heavy clouds and a bitter crispness to the air that felt to Emmerich like coming snow. It was not winter yet, but autumn was beginning to peel away from the skies and leave them sparse and bleak. The most dangerous time of year, when cold and hunger often claimed more lives than disease or fever ever did.

He and Ezra departed for the close quite early. It was a good ways north on foot from the printing house, and they left just before dawn, bundled well into their coats. Emmerich had the bulldog secure at his hip beneath his coat, and Ezra was carrying his Lutreole somewhere upon him as well. They had divided their ten meager bullets equally between them, despite Emmerich’s protests that Ezra would likely be of much more value with the majority of them. But Ezra would not hear of leaving Emmerich with less than he had. 

They passed out of the factory district, through the muddy alleys Havesbonnet and Dialford and into the more polished streets of Highcarriage. There was little fog this morning and the streets were quite clear, and the sound of their footsteps were loud on the stones of the street. As they neared Carrousel Hill and a growing light began to come up behind the rooftops, lamplighters started to ghost about in the streets, carrying their poles to put out the very gaslights that they had lit the evening before. Emmerich caught Ezra watching them in a sort of rapt fascination, captivated by the way that they darted about in the shadows and touched out the lights.

The close itself was visible from a great distance away, but most imposing when they had breached the crest of the hill itself. A great wall of brick and metal, rising hundreds of meters into the air for near half a mile on the crest of Carrousel Hill. Ships were housed in the wide arches of the framework, clamped in place as cargo was unloaded or loaded via great metal lifts. Great open platforms were built opposite it, a scaffolding to balance against the overwhelming structure of the berths, to hold pallets of cargo and to make reaching the ships in the higher tiers easier. Emmerich and Ezra had arrived at a time when the work of the day was beginning in earnest; the entirety of the close was rousing itself into motion, metalwork clanking and sturdy little carts trundling past beneath the wooden pylons, drawing pallets of crates behind them and puffing out clouds of steam from brass pipes. Men shouted out to each other over the noise, though it was far less of a racket now than it was at the busiest times, which were usually just around midday.

Ezra kept himself quite close to Emmerich’s side, and though he appeared perfectly at ease Emmerich did notice that he sometimes startled at louder, unexpected noises and his attention moved constantly from one thing to another. Emmerich remembered feeling somewhat the same the first time he had been here; it was nothing like the rest of the city, and even the bustle of the busiest marketplaces and work yards couldn’t match it for commotion and rush. 

Finding if and where the Frand had docked was simple enough—Emmerich simply stopped a passing man wearing the sash of a Deputy Closemaster and inquired about it. It was not a suspicious request, and the man told Emmerich that the Frand had indeed come in and where she was berthed. Then on impulse, Emmerich asked after her laytime.

“Not so long for one of her size,” said the Deputy, who spoke in a thick brogue that Emmerich had some difficulty understanding. “Only a few hours, she was given, and she’s used up half of it already as they’ve not got her right papers through yet.” 

Emmerich thanked the man and pushed Ezra off into the bustle of the workers, before the Deputy had any time to wonder about who the two of them were or why they might be asking about a ship. 

The Frand had come in on the far side of the merchant half of the docks, near the area where missionary ships made berth. It was quieter this deep into the close, as missionary ships were rarely chartered for cargo and their time in port was usually meant for resupplying, repairs, and leave. Emmerich and Ezra wound their way through the light mist shrouding the hill, easily seen through but threading cold and damp along the ground. The ship was berthed in a first tier, sitting in a brick arch only several dozen yards above the ground. It meant they did not have to climb to a second platform to keep an eye on it, or anyone approaching.   
“What now?” Ezra asked. 

“Anything those men will be wanting is still aboard the ship,” Emmerich said. “So they’ll have to come to her, unless she’s unloaded soon. Unless that happens, we can simply wait for them here.” 

Ezra nodded, glancing around. There was a very long row of pallets behind them, holding cargo waiting to be loaded into outgoing ships, and his eyes fixed onto them. “Better if we don’t stand about in the open,” he said, and Emmerich agreed. Though the men had not seen him as the Thistledown, there was the chance that the dockers themselves might find them odd or suspicious. Men doing no work did tend to be conspicuous here, and Emmerich well remembered how quickly he had learnt the art of appearing busy, even if there was truly nothing to be done. 

Ezra went and hoisted himself up into the nearest pallet, which sat a certain height off the ground and did take a large step to mount. Emmerich followed and braced one hand on the side of a crate. Ezra caught his other hand to help him up, just as the sound of several voices drew near. Emmerich could hear that of a woman’s amongst them, a much more uncommon sound at the close. Intrigued, he leant sideways enough so he could see around the corner of the crates. 

A missionary crew was passing by, crisp in the black uniforms outlined in grey, silver epaulets on their shoulders, caps upon the men and small neat bonnets on the heads of the two women with them. Though he’d had very little to do with the area of the missionary docks when he’d worked here, Emmerich knew all five types of Order uniforms on sight, even could recognize a few of the ranking insignias that were pinned to the lapels. All from watching in a kind of distant, impossible, half-wanting for all the years spent working here. He could still remember them now. 

“Emery,” Ezra whispered, and squeezed at his wrist. 

“Yes, sorry,” Emmerich said, and lifted himself up fully onto the pallet. Ezra kept a firm grip on him and pulled him in between the crates, steadied him and caught his shoulder.

“What did you see?” 

Emmerich shook his head. “Nothing of importance.” 

From deep within the pallet, between towers of crates, they had a good enough view of the keel of the Frand, and any men who might be approaching her berth. Of course, there was no telling when the men from the Thistledown might arrive, or if the Frand’s cargo would be unloaded, or when the pallet they were hiding in might be transferred into a waiting ship itself. And there was the distinct possibility that Staard’s men might be coming for it all as well. 

Ezra seemed rather unworried about all of this. He’d reached into his coat and taken out a small rough sack, and was now shaking its contents out upon the lid of the crate he was sitting on. Rolling paper and a smaller sack of what had to be tobacco. He’d not had it when they’d left this morning, so Emmerich could only assume he’d bought or stolen it off one of the men at the close. 

“How do you always manage that?” Emmerich asked, and Ezra only smiled and handed him his own bit of rolling paper. It was a stronger concoction than what Ezra had bought off the proprietor of the inn of the rookery, and the first breaths of smoke burned Emmerich’s lungs and lightened his head. Even Ezra coughed against the back of his fist a few times. After that they sat in silence, huddled into their coats and listening to the clanking of machinery, creaking of ropes, shouting of men and rumble of carts as they passed by. 

“How do you suppose they’ll get hold of it all,” Ezra said after perhaps a half hours’ time, nearly to himself. “I mean, out from the ship.” 

“I’ve no idea. It’s not as though it’ll be on the bill of lading, is it,” Emmerich said, and then waved his hand when Ezra only looked questioningly at him. Ezra might be fully comfortable in his life as an outlaw, or in the upper class of the peerage, but he knew very little of common work. “I suppose we’ll see soon enough.” 

Ezra nodded and shifted his position against the crate he was leaning against. He had rolled a second cigarette already, although Emmerich had refrained from the same. When he’d been more in the habit, he’d usually smoked to calm or entertain himself, and he had much more of a need to be alert and focused this morning. Emmerich turned his attention back to the gap between the crates because, as always, watching Ezra smoke was equally as distracting. 

Some time later—long enough to lose track of exact minutes, but not enough for his attention to wane—Emmerich caught sudden sight of the tail-end of a ruddy-brown coat going past the crates, somewhat the color of dried blood. There were two other men following along with him; one fair-haired and the other with a hat pulled low over his brow. They were within his view for only a handful of seconds, passing beyond the gap in the crates, but Emmerich was sure of who they were. He recognized the wearer of the reddish-coat as the dark-haired man from the Thistledown, and the other two were likely the men who had been in his company then.

“There,” he said, and Ezra glanced up at once. “They’ve come.”

Without another word between them, they rose to their feet and squeezed out from between the stacked crates, jumping down from the pallet to the hard-packed ground. Emmerich spotted the men quickly—they were not moving towards the Frand but rather away from it, in the opposite direction of the great berths. Emmerich and Ezra began moving along the pallets, Emmerich in front and keeping the men in sight, but careful to not get too near to their quarry. These men did not know Emmerich’s face, but it was uncertain if they knew Ezra only by reputation or if they could recognize him. Emmerich had decided to assume the latter, to err in caution. 

They were still in clear view of the Frand when the three men they were following stopped under the shadow of a squat brick building. This Emmerich remembered as the Closemaster’s Quarters, which would be mostly empty now during the active hours of the day. He and Emmerich paused themselves several yards away, just around the corner of the end of the row of pallets. This last one held barrels lashed together, and through the gaps in the round shapes they could clearly see the three men. 

“What are they doing?” said Ezra, after several minutes where the men had not moved, only stood about together in a close bundle, their breath fogging up around them. The one with the hat was carrying an iron cat’s paw with him, which he had perhaps picked up at here the close. They were common enough for it.

“Waiting for the ship to be unloaded?” Emmerich offered, though he wasn’t sure. They were not close at all to where cargo from that berth would be brought. “Or perhaps, for a person.” 

He was proved right within a few minutes time. A man drawing a small handcart behind him came around the corner of the building, wearing a thick woolen frock coat and dressed nothing like a dock worker. Some sort of chandler or merchant, perhaps. But clearly he was the person who the other men had been waiting for. They approached him at once, the man in the red coat at the front, who looked to be rather in charge.   
Emmerich could not hear their conversation clearly from their position, but it seemed as though the men were spending some amount of time convincing the chandler that they were the right ones to receive the cargo. The man did not appear to agree until a small rough sack passed between their hands, which the chandler peered into and seemed to approve of. Then finally the handcart was given over and the chandler disappeared back around the corner of the building, leaving the three men alone again. 

“Bartho,” said the fair-haired man to the one in the reddish coat, rather loudly. “You sh’uldn't’ve given that over.”

“Well he weren’t going to give it any other way. Let’s have a look,” said Bartho, and the three of them clustered round the crate. The fair-haired one levered several nails up from the lid with the cat’s paw, enough for it to be lifted and looked under. The man in the hat made an appreciative noise and clapped Bartho on the shoulder. 

“Well picked,” he said, as the fair-haired man tapped the nails back into the lid, now that the contents were assured of. “Let’s off, then.”

The three men were gone nearly at once, seizing the handcart and pulling it around the corner of the Closemaster’s building. Emmerich and Ezra held their positions for a few moments before following. There were several areas where barges clustered, each leading into one of three main canals—the west, east or north. The north canal threaded straight out of the city into the countryside, but the other two passed through it, and splintered dozens of smaller canals and channels. The barges that went north were larger, as they carried more and went further, and needed larger docks because of it. But it was towards the smaller river docks that the three men were headed, so they would be staying within the city wherever they planned to head, either to the east or west. 

By the time Ezra and Emmerich caught up, the men were already loading the single crate into a small barge, painted along the sides with a worn blue color. Bartho was speaking to a lighterman on the shore, passing him another small sack and clearly paying for the man to give the use of the barge over to them. Then he climbed into the barge himself and they shoved off from the shore, the motor that drove it whirring its parts and heaving hot white puffs of steam into the air. The direction they were moving in made where they were heading clear.

“They’re taking the west canal,” Emmerich said. “Ezra, go.” 

The boy was on his feet at once, and his hand passed across the back of Emmerich’s shoulders as he dashed off, as though in reassurance. For Emmerich or for himself, Emmerich was unsure, but it wasn’t unwelcome. 

They had planned for the possibility of the men taking a barge out with the cargo, and not simply walking from the close with it. Ezra would now follow them from the rooftops, keeping the barge in his direct sight. Emmerich could follow much more easily from the ground, as he was familiar with the system of the canals and knew what streets ran alongside them. They did not know the destination of the barge, so following it was what they would do until an opportunity to seize it had presented itself. Ezra could signal to him if a very unexpected change in the barge’s path occurred, but otherwise Emmerich was sure enough in his knowledge of the canals that he would be unlikely to fall behind. And Ezra had been confident of his own ability to traverse the rooftops--after he had lead them easily through the city that way on the very morning after they’d met, Emmerich was as well. 

Emmerich dug his way into the dockers and lightermen bustling about, making his way towards the part of the close that would take him into the streets that banked the west canal. He kept an eye on the blue-painted barge as he did, keeping abreast of it through the passing dock crowd. It chugged slowly through the dark greenish waters of the canal, powered by a worn-out engine that moved it at a sluggish but steady pace. He reached the edge of the close only a few moments behind the barge, and watched as the men steered it off the first branch of the canal that took them southward. Emmerich pressed his hand against the shape of the bulldog inside his coat, took in a breath, and moved into the streets. 

The canal the men had taken was only three or so times the width of the barge itself, edged by tall and narrow brick buildings to either side, crushed together with very little or no spaces between them. Every so often Emmerich could see the reassuring flash of Ezra’s silhouette on the rooftops, moving nimbly and easily and keeping a near even pace with the barge below. Emmerich himself held back, staying to alleyways and streets that kept a building or two between himself and the barge, and as the men were taking a very direct path along one of the smaller canals, he was easily following them. They had already nearly gotten out of Highcarriage and were moving in a gradual but clear south-west direction. They would be soon be passing into the edges of Sussebury Faire; a great market district where the canals would splinter apart and it would become much more difficult to follow them. 

Emmerich saw a sudden flicker of white from above; Ezra waving his signal down to Emmerich. He realized why at once. They were approaching a lock up ahead beyond a bend in the canal—a place where the barge would need to stop and operate the mechanisms to carry it on to the next section. It would be a natural opportunity at which to waylay it, with the men distracted and the barge itself stationary in the water.   
He flashed his own signal back to Ezra, and reached to his holster to retrieve the bulldog. The grip of it was heavy in his hand, warm from being pressed close to him beneath his coat, and he could feel the added weight of the few extra bullets within the chambers. He smoothed his thumb over the worn wood of the insets, and took in a sturdy breath. Then he came around the corner, onto the open lane that lead alongside the canal, only a few dozen steps behind the barge. 

The man called Bartho was sitting in the front of it, the two others behind—the one in the hat and the one with fair hair. The former was sitting nearly atop the single crate, his feet braced to either side of it. The lock was just coming into sight up ahead, and the fair-haired man rose to his feet and began to carefully climb towards the prow, likely to help with working the mechanism, which often took two. The man in the hat stayed in place. With this further distraction, Emmerich’s appearance at the side of the canal went wholly unnoticed. There was no one else in this quiet part of the canal, the lane empty of passersby and mostly back ends of buildings pressing up to either side. 

“Oi!” Emmerich called out, cupping a hand to the side of his mouth. “Wait up there!” 

Only the man in the hat glanced up, the others still settling themselves in the barge. “What’s that then?” he called out, peering in Emmerich’s direction. 

Before Emmerich could pull the bulldog from his coat and begin the hold up, there came a sharp whistling, a loud crack that echoed down the length of the canal. The man in the hat jerked as though he’d been shoved from the back. A strange expression of surprise took hold of his face, nearly comical in its exaggeration. Then he fell forward over the crate, the back of his shabby coat torn open with a ragged red hole.   
Emmerich staggered back to the brick wall behind him at once, into an alcove that held a thick iron door. Firing shots was a very last choice in their plan, and there was no reason for Ezra to have done so now. The only explanation was that someone else had. The two remaining men in the barge scrambled into motion. Bartho brought out a large, clumsy flintlock from beneath his coat that made the bulldog look very sleek in comparison. He aimed it towards the rooftops, but it was clear that from their position in the middle of the canal he had a very poor line of sight. Emmerich, on the other hand, could see much more.

At least two other men had appeared on the rooftops above, dark shapes against the greyish skies. Emmerich would guess that there were more on the side above himself, the side he could not see. He hoped that Ezra had already noticed them when the shot had gone off, and hidden himself. Emmerich could hear them shouting to each other, in a language that he of course did not speak, so he didn’t know if they had seen Ezra or if they considered Emmerich a threat either. 

Emmerich heard a splash, and saw that the fair-haired man was now in the canal, thrashing wildly about. Whether he had jumped or fallen was unclear, but that he could not swim was quite apparent. He was trying to make his way back to the barge to hold onto it, calling out for his remaining companion to help him. But Bartho had begun to fire his flintlock up towards the roofs, poorly aimed shots that cracked and echoed down the canal. He was nowhere near to hitting anything, and Emmerich could hear the men laughing at his attempts. 

They didn’t seem to be in any hurry to do what they had clearly come to do—the same thing that Emmerich and Ezra had hoped—and with Bartho and his companion providing a distraction, Emmerich knew he should take the opportunity to get out of this doorway. There might be more men coming for the barge, on the ground or on the roof, and if they were not seeing Emmerich as an enemy now they surely would if they caught him and found his pistol. Or his partner. He had to find a way up to the roof himself, out of the clear sight of the men, and get to Ezra. 

Emmerich was not usually a devoted man, but he did pay a quick prayer in his mind then, just for luck. Then he threw himself out of the doorway and dashed around the corner into a narrow alleyway. No shots were fired after him, and the alleyway was empty. Several old barrels happened to be stacked and lashed together here, tall enough to reach halfway to the roof. He made for them at once, clambering up until he could get his foot onto the sill of a window and one hand grasped around a stout chimney, and pulled himself onto the roof. He lay quite flat there for a moment, drawing the bulldog out from his holster and glancing about for the positions of the others up here with him. 

The chimneys and edges and varying heights of the rooftops made for endless places to shield oneself, and Emmerich could not see Ezra at all. He knew the boy was on this side of the canal with him, at least. There were two men on the opposite side of the canal, and at least one on his own side as well. The man on his side was several rooftops away and paying all his attention down towards the barge. Emmerich could hear loud voices coming from the canal, though he could not see what was happening, it sounded like some sort of struggle was going on there. There was the sound of yelling, then splashing. A pistol shot cracked off the brick walls, and a second followed. 

With the appearance of this other group of men, Emmerich was giving the crate in the barge up for lost. He and Ezra would be foolish to try and take on this many men with their limited ammunition and knowledge of the new situation. If he could only find Ezra, somehow signal him to stay hidden, they could likely escape from this unharmed. Just as he was thinking that, he saw the movement of a shadow some distance ahead; low and moving carefully across the roof. He could only imagine it was Ezra. He desperately wanted to alert him somehow, make his own presence known, but all he could safely do was watch as Ezra crept closer to the other man standing above the eaves. 

Emmerich could not call out without giving himself away, so he only watched as Ezra put himself behind a soot-blackened clay chimney only a few paces from the man, and then whistled. Softly, but enough to catch the man’s attention, draw him back from the edge of the roof and bring him to peer curiously around the chimney corner. And then Ezra had his pistol on him, gesturing with his other hand and directing the man down to his knees. The man went, slowly, a grimace furling over his weather-beaten features. 

Ezra said something to him, and the man replied, but they clearly did not understand a word of what the other had said, from the expressions on their faces. Despite everything, Emmerich found himself amused that, finally, they had come across a language Ezra did not speak. 

Suddenly the man moved, his shoulder shifting as if to reach for something on his person, and Ezra’s own movement was quick and immediate—he struck the man across the temple with the butt of his pistol and sent him collapsing to the roof. He did not move from where he fell. At once Ezra went about looking through his coat, and drew out something rather pistol-shaped. He glanced quickly into the chambers and then tucked it into his coat, keeping his own pistol in his hand.

A distant shot echoed out, and Emmerich thought nothing of it, assumed it was yet another from down at the canal. Until a puff of white mortar came off the corner of the bricks, only a handspan from Ezra’s shoulder. 

Ezra’s head snapped up and he froze for a moment, the wind whipping his dark hair off his face. Then he fired back, out of what looked like pure instinctive reaction, before scrambling back around behind the chimney. A strange ceramic _ping_ echoed back from the other side of the roof, a sure sign of the bullet missing the mark. Ezra cursed fiercely and Emmerich counted the shot in his mind— _eins_. Ezra had four bullets left now, and himself still with five. Although Ezra had acquired a second gun, likely with a certain amount of bullets in it. But they still had no idea how many men were here, nor how many shots they could afford to spare. 

Emmerich could still hear a commotion down at the canal, of whatever scuffle was still going on there, but Ezra had clearly somehow drawn the attention of the two men on the other side. Enough that they were shooting at him. Emmerich still could not go to him, and Ezra did not even know he was here. For the moment he could only watch. The men on the other side of the rooftops were moving, positioning themselves so that they were not out in the open. 

Ezra suddenly rolled out from behind the chimney, staying flat on his belly, and fired off a shot that cracked across the rooftops. _Zwei_. But there was no hint that he had hit what he was aiming for. Their remaining bullets were now down to eight, and Emmerich held more than half of them. He thought he ought to get to Ezra as soon as he could, but he did not want to make himself an easy target, and there could also be more men that he was not aware of, that he hadn’t yet seen. 

Ezra had already retreated behind his chimney tower again, his back pressed to the stone and his face grim. The man he had struck with his pistol still lay beside him on the roof, but it was at that moment that he began to stir and move again. Ezra glanced down and, with no change of his expression, fired a shot into the man’s throat. A splash of dark, frothy blood and the man’s body jerked and seized and went still. Emmerich swallowed. _Drei._

When Ezra lifted his head again, his eyes caught Emmerich’s from across the roof. His face brightened at once. He made a rapid gesture and mouthed, “to me!” And Emmerich trusted him; that Ezra would make sure he would be unharmed. 

It was just about a dozen steps across to where Ezra was crouching, and yet they felt like the very longest of Emmerich’s life. He heard only his breathing and the pounding of his own feet as he ran. Ezra threw an arm around the side of the chimney and fired rather blindly across the canal, but that maybe have been something of the idea—to keep the other men in their cover as Emmerich made for him. Vier, Emmerich counted as he reached the chimney and threw himself behind it, collapsing hard to his knees to stop himself. He could not look at the ruined body of the man lying nearby on the roof, instead tilting his forehead to the brick and panting through his teeth. Ezra grabbed Emmerich’s coat front at once and clutched him close. 

“I didn’t know where you’d gone,” he breathed out. “Were you _there_ , the whole time?” 

“Most of it,” Emmerich said, and Ezra’s grin was rather wild.

“We’ve two across from us left,” he said. “One is wounded in the shoulder. I did hit him, but he made no noise about it.” 

“Can he still fire?” Emmerich asked. There was a thin lash of hot pain beneath his own ribs, a stitch from the running and climbing and throwing himself about. 

“Unless he favors his left arm, likely not very well.” 

They caught gazes for a long moment. Ezra’s eyes looked as grey as the sky, all traces of blue drawn out from them, his eyelashes flickering in the wind. And as a certain thought ran through Emmerich’s head, he was sure the same was going through Ezra’s. 

“Do you trust my aim?” Ezra spoke first. 

“Yes,” said Emmerich, with no hesitation. 

Ezra nodded, and his eyes flicked about over the rooftops. “Get to that gable there,” he said, pointing with the barrel of his pistol to an upraised portion some distance away on a lower roof. “Not too quickly, give him a chance to see you and—what are you doing?” 

Emmerich had swung open the chamber of the bulldog and emptied two of his bullets into his palm. “You’ve only one shot left,” he said. “I _do_ trust your aim but you’d be left with nothing.” 

Ezra let Emmerich pass him the bullets, and he hesitated only a moment before sliding them into the chambers of his own pistol. “I’ve a second gun now, as well,” he muttered, but that was all, and then he put a hand to Emmerich’s shoulder and held. “Ready?”

“Yes,” Emmerich said, getting to a knee. His heart throbbed in his chest but on the outside he was steady. He would go out into the open and when the man across the roof made himself visible in order to shoot him, Ezra would return the favor. That was, if the man saw Emmerich at all, or even decided to shoot. But they might be trapped here for a while, otherwise.

“Go,” Ezra whispered then, and Emmerich went.

His first step was on a particularly slippery bit of roof and his feet nearly came out from under him—at least the noise he made regaining his footing as he dashed towards the gable might be enough to catch the attention of anyone on the opposite side of the canal. Emmerich didn’t dare to glance that way as he went, because if he was to be shot at he didn’t want to watch it coming. And just then, something pinged past him and snapped off the slight slope of the roof just an arms’ length in front of him, digging a deep rut there.

Emmerich’s first deep, helpless reaction was to turn about and run the other way. He faltered in his paces for a moment, but holding still would be even worse than going forward. His momentum forced him onwards anyway, and all his hesitation did was to throw him a bit off balance. The gable was not far away now, another few strides and he would be there, although it was not very high and wouldn’t provide as much cover as the chimney, it would be _something_ —

A shot roared from his side of the canal, ringing in his head. Ezra had fired. A moment later Emmerich reached the gable and collapsed behind it, flattening himself to the roof and hearing nothing but echoes in his ears and the rush of hot blood. His skin burned with excitement even as the wind froze against him, and he panted into the collar of his coat. Sweat trickled from his hairline along his temple.  
“Emery!” Ezra called out, and his tone was satisfied. “You’re all right. It’s done.”

Emmerich lifted his head. Had Ezra only needed that one shot? It seemed to be true, as the boy was coming along the roof to him now, looking pleased with himself and his single shot. But Emmerich’s attention was on something else, because from this place on the roof he could now see down into the canal, and what had been occurring there in the meantime. 

Something had happened to the barge, and half of the stern was submerged in the greenish water. Perhaps it had been shot at, or purposefully overturned, but it was plainly sinking. The fair-haired man floated alongside it, motionless and face-down in the water. Another man lay along the lane alongside the canal, atop a large dark patch of red. A ways further down the canal, having drifted there, was the body of first man who had been shot, now missing his hat. Bartho was nowhere to be seen. But the crate was still sitting there in the middle of the barge, apparently untouched, though the water was lapping up against the very corner of it. 

“ _Ezra_ —“ Emmerich began, getting to his feet, because if they didn’t make it back down to the canal quickly, that crate would be lost entirely. 

“These weren’t Kegg’s men,” Ezra said, his mind clearly elsewhere. “Must be another— _down!_ ”

They dove apart in opposite directions as a shot rang between them—Ezra around the edge of chimney stack and Emmerich off the edge of the roof onto a lower one, built with a sloping edge. But he was not alone there. In fact, he nearly dropped down upon the head of a man crouching there on the ridge, one Emmerich had had no knowledge of being there or where he had even come from. Perhaps waiting for his own opportunity to shoot, for Emmerich felt the solid brunt of a pistol knock against his shoulder when they tangled together. The man grunted, and Emmerich heard a clatter of metal skittering away from them.

The man had dropped his pistol, leaving himself unarmed. Realizing it at the same moment, he and Emmerich both stopped their tussling. The muzzle of the bulldog was pressed up near the man’s jaw, and both of them were breathing hard and balanced precariously together on the ridge of the roof. The man had pale blue eyes and a ragged growth of fair beard, did not appear to be much older than Emmerich himself. Emmerich felt his heart beat sickeningly in his chest, and he twisted his hand so that his finger fell neatly to the hollow of the trigger guard. 

For a still and silent moment, neither of them moved. 

“ _Nej_ —“ the man said, breaking it at once. Then Emmerich squeezed the trigger. 

The pistol barked in his hand, roared and jerked with a life of its own. But he was too close to miss. The man’s face disappeared into an eruption of red, and a spray of warmth splashed across Emmerich’s face and neck. The world rang in his ears. The scene of gunpowder bloomed bitter in his nose and on his tongue. The man’s body, now heavy and limp and still partly entwined with Emmerich, began to slide down the slope of the roof. Emmerich’s grip on the ridge was already tenuous, and his fingers lost their hold entirely then.

He was dragged along helplessly, rolling down towards the roof edge. Another deafening shot from further away whirled in his ears as he went, and a howl of a voice that was not Ezra’s. Emmerich hit the edge of the roof then and caught, for a moment, in the wooden gutter. A few moments later, a splash of a heavy body into water. The roof overstretched the lane below, hung directly over the canal, and there was now a wide ripple spreading from a section of frothy water. A few moments later a dark shape bobbed back to the surface, unmoving.

Two more shots went then, in quick succession, and Emmerich heard the hollow ricochet of a bullet nearby, saw the puff of dust from where it had skidded along the roof only an arm’s length from him. There came a loud yelp, and a muffled thump. Footsteps ran across the roof towards him, and Emmerich tried to shift himself back onto the more solid edge of the roof. As he did so, the gutter creaked beneath his weight and bowed downwards. It did not detach, but it was enough to send him tumbling over the edge. 

“Emmerich!” Ezra’s voice shouted. But Emmerich had managed to grab the eaves, a much more solid support, and his boots could reach the wide ledge of a windowsill below. Though he was still directly over the canal, his hold was solid enough, his weight well-caught. He was all right. 

“ _Emery!_ ” Ezra cried out again from somewhere above him. 

“I’m all right—I’ve a good grip!” Emmerich called up. “Get down to the barge!” 

But Ezra was at the edge of the roof now, and he threw one hand down toward Emmerich, stretching as far as he could without toppling himself over the eaves. 

“Grab on!” 

“ _Die Barkasse—“_

“Take my fucking hand, Emmerich!”

Emmerich did so. His palm slapped against Ezra’s wrist and his fingers clenched around it, as Ezra’s wrapped back around his own wrist and held. Ezra dragged him up over the roof, got an arm around Emmerich’s waist and rolled them, pressing him down with the weight of his own body as if still afraid Emmerich would slip out from his grasp. 

“Ezra,” Emmerich said, muffled from the way the boy’s shoulder was pressing against the edge of his mouth. “Ezra, _ich bin unverletzt. Es ist nicht mein Blut.”_

“I know,” Ezra said, and still didn’t move from him. 

“Ezra,” Emmerich said again, softly, and put a hand to the boy’s hair. Ezra clung to him for one moment more, and then climbed to his feet. He put his hand down and Emmerich took it, allowed himself to be pulled up. They wobbled together for a moment, pressed close with hands clasped, until Emmerich got a hand up round Ezra’s shoulder and kept him steady, moved them apart. And then, remembered what it was they were up here for, how they were likely not safe yet. 

“ _Die Männer_ —“ he said, beginning to glance about the rooftops. 

“Dead, or run,” Ezra said simply. “There’s no one left.” 

“ _Und die Barkasse..._?” said Emmerich, and Ezra drew in a sharp breath. He reached down and took Emmerich’s wrist, drawing him across the roof.

“We’d better go and see.” 

They climbed down from the rooftops together, Emmerich harboring a certain fear that the barge had sunk all together and taken the crate with it. And then they would be exactly where they had been before—no. Not the same as before; even further behind. Because they were very nearly out of bullets now. He had two left and he was unsure how many of the shots he had heard in the last few minutes had been Ezra’s, and how many had come from elsewhere. 

But when they got out to the canal again, the barge was not much worse off than it had been the last time Emmerich caught a glimpse of it. It was still sinking, but the crate was still sitting out of the water and looked mostly unharmed but for the red-brown stain drying across its lid. A man had been shot over the top of it, after all. 

The barge had drifted near the canal wall before it had sunk, so it was just within arms’ reach. Still, it took the both of them and all their strength to drag it through the water towards them, kneeling at the stone edge of the canal and leaning as far out over it as they could. Ezra had to push away the sodden body of the fair-haired man, which had somehow gotten snagged against the prow and was coming along with it. The water was lapping heavily at a corner of the crate by now, but did not look as if it had gotten into it much. Finally, the edge of the barge grated up against the stone, and Ezra held it there while Emmerich dragged it bodily out. His body remembered this, and even though he was not as strong as he had been years ago, he could do it better than Ezra could have. 

“We’ve got it,” Emmerich panted, sitting back on his heels once the crate was secure on the solid ground. Though he had not yet seen what was inside, there was finally a feeling of accomplishment, of having done something that would help them to survive. 

He glanced up at Ezra then, who was still a bit red-faced from exertion. The icy wind whipped and bit at his clothes, ruffling through his dark hair and raking it off his forehead. His lips looked a bit blue. He suddenly rose to his feet, grabbing Emmerich by the shirtfront as he did and dragging him upwards as well. Both Ezra’s hands closed in his collar and he shook Emmerich, hard. 

“Guns. Guns, you great _idiot_ ,” Ezra said, eyes bright and somewhat wild. “You wanted me to let you fall for _guns_? And _bullets?”_

“I’d a grip,” Emmerich said. “And I’d likely have survived falling.” 

“Can you _swim?”_

“Never tried it.” 

Ezra stared at him, gaping for a moment, and then caught him roughly around the waist and embraced him, his face pressed against Emmerich’s neck for just a brief, warm moment. Then he let go, stepping away as if it hadn’t even happened. 

“You’re still an idiot,” he said, over his shoulder. 

“ _Tut mir leid._ ” The wind caught Emmerich’s voice and threw it down the canal. 

“I know,” said Ezra. “Just don’t do it again.” 

#

Getting the heavy and cumbersome crate back through the city was something of its own adventure, as the barge was sunk and they had no cart with which to pull it, and it was rather awkward for even two men to carry between them. And, they were still very far away from the district where the printing house was, further into the west of the city. Eventually they came upon a pile of old boards at the back of a building and took two, straddling the crate atop them and making for far easier carrying with one man bracing the boards at each end. It was not the most subtle of methods. They had to stay to wider and flatter streets for easier passage, and Emmerich felt as though at any moment someone was going to see them, recognize them, realize what they were carrying. He had splashed some of the water from the canal on his face and neck to wash off the blood of the man he had shot, but it was still all over his collar and he could feel it drying in places water hadn’t reached. Inside his ear and in creases near his mouth and eye. If nothing else, he was afraid that someone would notice that. That he looked like a man who had just murdered another.

But they made it back to the printing house unscathed, unnoticed, and rather exhausted. They hauled the crate upstairs first, and then Emmerich went to the washroom and scrubbed the rest of the blood from his skin. But it had already dried well into his collar and coat, and wouldn’t come out. He returned to his and Ezra’s room with a sodden brown-tinged shirt, thinking over the day’s events and the relative—though difficult—success that they’d had. Mostly, he wondered who the other men on the rooftops had been, how they had heard about the crate and its contents if they were not Staard’s, as Ezra had said. If they had come from a larger group who might want revenge for their comrades that had fallen today. 

And beside all of that, Emmerich had also shot a man. Shot him as he was looking into his eyes and had hardly hesitated about it. He had no strong feelings upon it at the moment, but he was sure they would come later, when the likelihood of their survival was less dire. Then it might truly come to him, and he would have to think of himself in somewhat of a different light, but until then it was of no desperate importance. Ezra had done much more than that today, killed at least three men, and he was certainly not dwelling on it. 

Ezra had got the crate lid sprung up again by the time Emmerich returned to their room, but it was clear he had not yet fully opened it to look inside. He was leaning against the wall and appeared to be waiting for Emmerich. 

“I thought we ought to look together,” he said by way of an explanation, and Emmerich was oddly touched.

It was late afternoon by now, near the entire day had been spent up with this, especially bringing the crate back through the city. Smoke rose from the nearby factories into the darkening sky, and an orange haze hung over the river. The crate upon the floor was bathed in the strange light from it, the wood turned to amber and the thick forged nails gleaming at their edges, the bloodstain on its lid like black ink. Ezra and Emmerich both went to a knee in front of it, and pried it open together. 

The crate was neatly packed, rows of slim wooden boxes carefully arranged in between smaller boards of wood to keep any of it from becoming displaced. Ezra took out one and opened the lid carefully, as though afraid of what might be inside. Emmerich found himself holding his own breath until the lid tipped back far enough for him to see the contents, the neat rows of bullets set into little slots within the box, evenly arranged.

“Three rows of twelve each,” Ezra said, and looked up at Ezra with a bright grin. “Thirty-six to a box, if each is the same.”

“ _Donnerwetter,_ ” Emmerich said through his fingers, and Ezra laughed warmly and caught his shoulder.

“You won’t need to count my shots any longer,” he said, and Emmerich let out a breathless laugh of his own. Ezra kept smiling at him, his hand warm on Emmerich’s neck, and for a moment Emmerich wondered what might happen if he were to kiss him. Perhaps he could pass it off as just an expression of excitement if Ezra weren’t to like it. But even the thought of it made him clammy and lightheaded, and then Ezra had let go of him and turned back to the crate and the chance was gone.

Not all of the boxes were the same, or held bullets—some held gears and mechanical parts that maybe have been meant for revolvers or even for other things, as some were clearly too large to fit into the makings of a firing weapon. The Acllaum-made pistols Emmerich had heard the men mention at the Thistledown were inside a wooden case, stamped with a mark that Ezra touched his fingers to carefully before tipping the lid open. There were four of them inside, all identical. The barrels were forged of a strange whitish-silver, the grips inlaid with a pearly white material that glimmered faintly iridescent. Otherwise they were plain, no engravings to speak of, each resting neatly in an individual slot within the case. They appeared as though they had never once been used. 

“Lovely,” Ezra said, brushing his hand across them. He glanced up at Emmerich with a smile. “You don’t happen to need a new pistol, do you?” 

Emmerich thought of the bulldog, the first and only gun he had ever killed with, its heavy aged frame and marks of use. It had done its job as it had been made for, as it had done for many men before him. He was not sure he trusted these delicate white things in the box, sitting so very clean and bloodless. Ezra picked one out and after a moment of examining it, seemed to break the pistol in half. The chambers sat built into the body of the gun, rather than swinging out to the side. Ezra clearly knew its kind as well, as he seemed to know most things. Emmerich touched a hand to the lustrous grip of one of the other pistols, nearly expecting it to be soft to the touch. 

“You could have gone for chevaliat training,” Ezra remarked suddenly as he peered down into the empty chambers of the one he held. 

“What?” Emmerich asked, startled. 

“You were watching them.” Ezra snapped the Acllaum pistol back into one piece then placed it down on the lid of the crate, keeping just his fingertips touching the length of the barrel. “At the close, the missionaries. And I’ve seen you watch their ships from this room—you spend hours, sometimes, just waiting for one to pass by the window. You’ve not a talent they could use, or you’d already be there, I assume. But the chevaliats, they can be anyone.” 

“I did always want to,” Emmerich admitted, and Ezra turned on him the same look that always warmed him—attentive and thoughtful, as though he might listen to Emmerich speak all day and not mind it at all. “But there was my family to take care of, and my village was only in the aughterlands and would have been days travel between to the missionary schools—I couldn’t leave them. Especially not when my mother was gone. Then I came here, but it was all I could do to survive, and I hardly could manage to speak and be understood for years, and there was no time to think of it.” 

“But now?” Ezra said. His hand came up and settled on Emmerich’s shoulder, fingers light and hesitant against his neck.

“Now.. _.ich habe dich,_ ” Emmerich said, unable to look at him as he spoke. There was a soft silence between them for a moment, in which Emmerich kept his breath trapped in his chest in fear of disturbing it. 

“And I have you, too,” Ezra said, and gripped his fingers more firmly into Emmerich’s shoulder.

Emmerich laughed, and kept on laughing, pressing back against Ezra and very glad indeed that this was what he had.


	6. The Poor Man

The sky had opened and an endless rain had begun, pouring so hard against the thin roof of their room that neither Ezra nor Emmerich had even tried for sleep. It was as though they were inside of a stretched-skin drum, with coins pelting down upon it. Emmerich was almost sure that the roof would eventually give way beneath the force of it all, or at least begin to leak. The streets had turned to mud below, and besides the rain there came the loud rush of water through the roof gutters.

Ezra and Emmerich sat up by candlelight, amidst the clutter and shadows, and made inventory of everything they had found within the crate. It kept them busy, occupied their minds, and neither of them spoke. They simply worked in comfortable silence, the only sound the rain clattering relentlessly against the printing house. They had a few tallow candles between them on the table, which smelt horribly but provided a longer light than the rushlights and a brighter one than the oil lantern.

“And I thought that it felt like snow earlier,” Emmerich said idly, reaching to light another candle with the dwindling stub of another.

Ezra smiled at him, an open and comfortable expression that was brightened even further by the candlelight. They were both in much better spirits than they’d been in days and even with the cold and the damp and the unrelenting noise of the rain, Emmerich felt at a sort of peace. Trouble would come to them later, no doubt, but for this moment he could find nothing to worry himself over.

“I think I’ve an idea of who our unexpected friends at the canal were,” Ezra said then. He was examining the pistol he had taken off the man he’d shot in the neck, twisting it about in his hands. The wood of the grip was grey and the metal tarnished, the barrel very narrow and curiously elongated. “Have a look here.”

Ezra held the pistol out towards Emmerich, the base of the grip pointed to him. There was a kind of brand at the bottom of it, scratched or pressed into the metal. Emmerich peered at it, making out letters arranged in the symbol but, as always, taking some time to recognize them as such and to read them.

“OFK?” he said, when he was sure.

“It’s the Öggwollrog Company. The fishing trade, up in Norrbygd,” said Ezra. He turned the pistol nimbly about in his fingers, flipped it so he was looking down the length of it. “They’re mostly an honest establishment, but some of their men can go for shadier work, what with all of the traveling about to different ports. Makes for simple smuggling and trade, some extra income on the side.”

“And they would care about a box of four pistols and bullets and metal workings, why?” Emmerich said, and Ezra only lifted a shoulder.

“I only know that this is the Öggwollrog mark,” he said. “Looks like it was scratched on by hand—OFK doesn’t manufacture anything themselves, certainly not arms. But I’d assume these were men who are, or were once, with the company. What I heard them speak, it was a northern tongue. Perhaps they were just men like us, like the others. Looking for something that will help them survive.”

The others; Bartho and his two companions. The two of whom were now dead and Bartho himself likely escaped somewhere, as Emmerich had not seen him nor his body after the shooting had begun. He was not concerned about the man as a threat, especially now robbed of his companions. Yet not knowing what had become of him was troubling; perhaps because it made him one more lost thread in the strange tapestry that was being woven in in the city’s downmarket, a pattern that neither Emmerich nor Ezra could fully see.

Ezra shivered suddenly and drew his coat tighter about him, then pulled one of the candles closer to himself. They had no fire going in their small hearth, since they did not want to open a window to let the smoke from it out—that would only bring in more cold, and the damp as well. The room smelt enough of wet wool and soggy wood as it was. The tallow candles were all they had, and they were only very little light and very little warmth.

Emmerich was built more sturdily than Ezra, perhaps more thick-skinned as well, and did not chill as quickly. They sat apart across the table now, but there would be nothing untoward if they were to sit beside each other instead if only for a little heat. They slept beside one another every night, after all. Perhaps they could even go to bed now, if not for sleep than to simply to hold on to each other, for comfort and warmth and—

There came a rap upon the door.

“Yes,” Ezra called out, and the door opened and Luca peered in. He held an iron clip with a light in it and looked to be only half-dressed, wearing trousers but a night-shirt. “Ah, Luca. Couldn’t sleep as well?”

“I heard you speaking, knew you were up,” Luca said. He came in with the iron holder, set it on the table near the candles. There were only two chairs at the table, so he leant against the wall nearby.

“You heard us over all of this?” Ezra said with a laugh, gesturing a hand upwards.

“Noticed the light as well. I see you’ve a new load of wealth here,” Luca said, sweeping his hand towards the contents of the table. “Where’s it come from?”

“I’d rather not tell you anything about it, honestly,” Ezra said. Emmerich noticed suddenly that the northern pistol was nowhere in sight. “It would be likely to only draw you into trouble, and you’re inviting enough of it as it is keeping us here.”

“I suppose that’s truth enough,” Luca said. “But it’s all under my roof—yourselves, and that money, somewhere—“ his eyes flickered about, and Emmerich had a sudden thought that Luca might have looked for the satchels at some time when he and Ezra had not been here, and not found them. He could not truly be angry with the man over it, not after knowing what Vena did to help them survive.

Emmerich had truly not thought about the money at all for some time—only the repercussions of having taken it, as they were the most immediately pressing. Now that he was remembered of it, he was beginning to think that he and Ezra ought to do something more with it than keeping it stuffed between the boards of the wall. It wasn’t of any use, to anyone at all, there. And of the three of them, clearly Luca was in the most need of it.

Ezra must have been thinking something of the same, because he leant forward upon his elbow, his eyes dark against the candlelight.

“How exactly did you get yourself into such debt, Luca?” he said. “Oughtn’t you have been more responsible, especially with Vena to look after?”

“I don't see how it's any concern of yours,” said Luca, with a sudden edge to his voice.

“Well, I do. Your daughter is—“ Ezra began hotly, but Emmerich caught his wrist beneath the table and turned it hard, hoping to quiet him before he told a secret that was not his to share.

“—worried,” Ezra finished, through his teeth. Emmerich let up on his arm, concerned that he’d hurt him, but Ezra was sturdier than that. He was only aggravated, and it was showing clearly on his face. “About you, about your livelihood. As am I.”

“And what business of it is yours, Ezra?” Luca said. “You can’t drop in and out of our lives this way, telling us what we ought to do after we’ve not laid eyes on you for nearly a year. You've no right.”

“Haven’t I?” Ezra said. “I oughtn’t be allowed to care simply because I was gone for a time? Things weren’t this dire for you a year back, perhaps I ought never to leave at all if you can’t manage your own affairs, if you only get yourself into foolish situations with your funds—”

“Ezra,” Emmerich said then, quietly but with force. “ _Halt die Klappe._ ”

Ezra looked to him, startled, enough so that he seemed to be at a loss for any next words. Luca appeared to have had enough of him anyway, and pushed off from the wall and strode across the room to the door, forgetting his rushlight on the table. Ezra said not a word to call him back, just settled back in his chair and folded his arms with no apparent concern. When the door had closed behind Luca, and his footsteps had faded from their hearing leaving only the sound of the rain, Emmerich turned to Ezra.

“Why don’t we give Luca some of the money,” he said. “There’s so much of it, and we haven’t used it for ourselves.”

“I suppose,” Ezra said, but sounded unconvinced. He pulled out the northern pistol from somewhere beneath the table, and began to examine it again.

“We wouldn’t have to simply _give_ it to him. If we were only to lend it—“

“Then he’d only be in the same predicament with us that he is with his other collectors,” Ezra said.

“But we wouldn’t harm him for his debts. And we could take other payment back, other than money—if we needed something printed, say, or—just for allowing us to stay here...”

“What would we ever need printed?” Ezra asked, and Emmerich shook his head.

“Nothing. I only thought—“

“And it’s a good thought, Emery, it is. I only think we ought to survive having taken it before we start passing it out to others.” Ezra leaned back, still playing with the northern pistol, running his fingertips over the etched symbol in the metal.

“I suppose,” Emmerich said, and Ezra did have a point.

“Oh, let’s not _fight_ about it,” Ezra said. “We’ll think of it later; I’m not wholly against it. Just, now—the timing’s rather unfortunate.”

“I think the timing might always be unfortunate,” Emmerich muttered. 

Ezra laughed, though it had a bit of a tiredness to it. “You're right in that,” he said. He leant forward suddenly, to take up the box that held the Acllaum pistols in it, and in doing so shifted another aside. Emmerich caught sight of the metal oddments and workings it held, which seemed to have no place amongst bullets and guns, and a faint idea began to take hold at an edge of his mind.

Ezra opened the box that held the pistols and spun it, so that the neat silver line of their hammers faced towards Emmerich, glinting in the candlelight. “By the way,” he said. “Which of these four very identical pistols would you like?” 

Emmerich leant back in his chair. “I’d rather keep on using the bulldog for now.”

Ezra looked to him, a quick frown flitting across his features. “You’re very sure?”

“I don’t trust these little things.” Emmerich nicked the handle of one of the delicate-looking pistols, sending up a bright metallic _ting_ from it. 

“You have strange loyalties,” Ezra said, but Emmerich ignored him. It wasn’t much of a loyalty, but rather a desire to stay with the familiar. Perhaps his pistol was no great value, but he understood it, and a new one wasn’t going to make him any better of a shot than he was.

“Well, we’ll still keep them either way,” Ezra went on. “At least for a while; trying to sell or trade them would be a careless move at the moment.”

“Naturally.”

Ezra seemed to hear the curtness in Emmerich’s voice, which he had not meant to let show—but he was getting rather tired of Ezra’s opinions intruding everywhere, especially in places they ought not to be. About debts, about pistols, about how others should conduct their lives.

“The rain’s let up some,” Emmerich said, which at least was true. He rose from his chair, stretching his shoulders back. “I’m going to try for sleep.”

“All right,” said Ezra carelessly, making no move of his own from his chair. He was beginning instead to disassemble the northern pistol in slow but certain movements, learning its pieces as he took them apart and laid them out neatly upon the table. Emmerich took off his coat and shoes and rolled himself into the blankets, facing the wall away from Ezra. The rain continued to patter at the roof, quieter than before, and Emmerich closed his eyes.

#

He was unsure if Ezra ever came to bed, for when Emmerich woke in the morning the bedding beside him was cool and the boy himself was dressed and scrubbed up and seemed to be readying to go out altogether. There was a small handful of money set on the table, which Ezra scooped up and stowed into a pocket of his trousers as Emmerich watched, braced upon one elbow.

“What’s that for?” he asked, expecting Ezra to startle or turn. He did neither, instead fiddling at his braces and wedging his boot on more firmly by pressing the heel of it against the table leg, his back to Emmerich.

“Well,” he said. “I’ve decided that we’ll pay Luca a bit of due for our stay, and I’m out to the market now so that we’re also not eating him poor as well.”

Emmerich couldn’t help but smile at this sudden charitable turn, no doubt brought on by their conversation of the night before. It was not what Emmerich had asked of him, but perhaps it was better. He was coming to understand that Ezra simply did not comprehend what it truly meant to be this poor, to be desperate and needing to support more than just one’s own self, and a part of him would never fathom why Luca hadn’t just done something else to keep from owing. Ezra hadn’t spoken out of arrogance, just an inability to comprehend—a thoughtlessness that held no rancor.

Ezra turned about then, his expression gone a bit soft. “I’ll not be long,” he said., then tilted his head. “Unless you’d like to come as well.”

“No, I think I’ll rather stay in today,” Emmerich said. Perhaps it would do them good to spend just a little time apart—after all they had hardly left each other since meeting, except for the hour or so that Emmerich had gone to see Archie. It was no wonder they were having moments of exasperation with each other by now, after nearly a fortnight of this close living.

“All right then,” said Ezra easily enough, reaching for his coat. “Don’t get too bored without me.”

“I’ll manage to occupy myself, I’m sure,” Emmerich said. Ezra turned his head just enough for Emmerich to see the edge of his smile, and then he was slipping out of the door and closing it softly behind him.

Emmerich listened to his footsteps creaking along the floorboards until they reached the back stairs. Then he got himself out of the bed and dressed, forgoing his coat because even though it was still chilled inside the room, he wanted to have the easy mobility of his arms. He also left off his braces, for another reason. Then he took out the box of metal bits and pieces that had come in the stolen crate, as well as his small toolkit, and went to work.

Ezra returned before the afternoon, looking pleased with himself and carrying a pasty in each hand, one of which was in a half-eaten state. Emmerich only gave him the briefest of glances when he entered their room, most of his attention focused quite deeply elsewhere. He had spread his work out over the floor near the window, as the floor was roomier than the table and there was much more light here to see by.

“One for you as well!” said Ezra, waving the flaking pastry in its thin paper sleeve.

“ _Danke. Auf dem Tisch, bitte,_ ” Emmerich replied, voice muffled from the tool clamped between his teeth.

“You _are_ concentrating, aren't you,” Ezra said, amused, and crossed the room to place the pasty on the table as asked. He dropped down in a chair and chewed at the corner of his own meal, his eyes on Emmerich. Emmerich could feel Ezra’s gaze prickling at the back of his neck, disruptive to his concentration. But after a few moments it no longer bothered him, and he sunk back into his work.

Ezra had half-undressed himself and fallen asleep curled up on their bed the next time Emmerich looked up, one arm thrown across his eyes against the watery light coming in at the window. While the rain had not returned, everything remained soggy and swollen and there was a heavy dampness to the air. Water from the overfilled gutters trickled down the edges of their window. The shadows they cast trickled over Emmerich’s shirtsleeves and hands.

Sometime even later, Emmerich noticed Ezra sitting up, yawning and stretching his arms above his head. He was vaguely aware of the boy leaving the bed and getting to his feet, but more important was setting a final spring into place.

“Emery, you haven’t eaten yet,” came Ezra’s voice from the direction of the table now.. “What _are_ you tinkering with over there that's got you so involved?”

“Only an idea,” Emmerich said, looking round his shoulder. “You’ll see if it comes together.”

Ezra laughed, and Emmerich felt the familiar warmth in his chest that kindled whenever he heard that sound. “All right,” he said. “Is that my boot?”

He had taken it whilst Ezra slept. “Don’t worry, I’ll not ruin it.”

“Well, I suppose I trust you,” Ezra said, and his smile was bright and playful. Emmerich ducked his head back to his work to hide his flush—not only from Ezra’s teasing manner but also his words. It was always a pleasure to hear Ezra speak of trusting him, and would have been no matter how appealing Emmerich found him.

Ezra came across to him then and rested his chin on Emmerich's shoulder, peering down at the work he had scattered across the floor. He smelled a bit of soot and wet wool and the out-of-doors. “Looks complicated,” he observed.

“Not terribly,” Emmerich said. The way Ezra was against him, his chest pressed lightly to Emmerich's back, scattered his thoughts and heated his skin. And then Ezra put an arm about him and held something up before Emmerich's face, a brown and white shape that smelled of turnip and onion.

“Are you trying to feed me yourself?” Emmerich said, though his stomach suddenly clamored at the presense of food, and at the reminder that he hadn’t eaten all day but for a piece of dried meat earlier.

“If you won't eat on your own I'll have to do it for you,” said Ezra, quite seriously. If only to appease him, Emmerich leaned in and bit off the top corner of the flaking dough. There was still warmth trapped within the pasty, and bits of warm cooked vegetable crumbled in his mouth. It was much improved from a dried bit of meat.

Ezra continued to hold it for Emmerich as he worked, and stayed rather close up against his back and shoulder. It was strange, but perhaps a way of Ezra offering an apology—despite that Emmerich was hardly even thinking of their tiff any longer. It did no good to dwell on these things, he could no more change Ezra’s past than his own. He rather thought that Luca deserved more of an apology than himself..

“Can I help in any way?” Ezra asked, once Emmerich had eaten the whole of the pasty out of his hand and there was only a bit of greasy paper left behind. Ezra crumpled it up and tossed it towards their tiny hearth.

“You could find me a pillowslip, or a sack, or anything that we could stuff up a bit with cloth or rags,” Emmerich said. Ezra looked puzzled by this, but he did as asked and went to root about in the cluttered corners of their room. He came back with a rough jute sack with several others stuffed up inside, and held it up for Emmerich to see.

“Will this do?”

“Nicely,” said Emmerich. “I think I’ve about finished here.” 

“All right,” Ezra said with interest. “Let’s see it what it is, then.”

“Show you, more like. Come here,” said Emmerich, and Ezra willingly put the jute aside and went to him. Emmerich caught him by the shoulders and stopped him, positioning him in an open area of the room with clear space all around him. Ezra only seemed amused by it, at least until Emmerich went to a knee before him and put a hand to the side of his leg, near his belt.

“Emery,” Ezra said then, his voice gone strange and soft.

Emmerich cleared his throat, and shook the harness in his other hand. “I’m just going to fix this round your leg and to your belt.”

There came a long pause, during which Emmerich kept his gaze firmly on Ezra’s boots and nothing else.

“All right,” Ezra said, finally, his tone untelling. “Go on.”

Ezra’s leg was warm through his trousers and Emmerich could not help but glean a sort of comfort from it; feeling the life of another person beneath his hands. The muscles of Ezra’s thigh flexed as he shifted in place, adjusting his stance. When Emmerich gave him his altered boot to put on, he did so by bracing one hand on Emmerich’s shoulder and pulling it on with the other. Then Emmerich began to connect the long strap from his waist to the mechanism he had built inside, which rested just below Ezra’s knee at the top of his tall boot.

“If you wore this elsewhere it would need to go on before you put your trousers on,” Emmerich told the side of Ezra’s leg. The straps would be meant to go through small slits that would be cut into the trouser fabric above the boot, so that the main mechanism rested in the inside of the boot but the tension line would run against Ezra’s leg beneath his trousers. “So it would be hidden.”

“I imagine so,” Ezra said. His voice was still careful. Emmerich thought this must be mortifying for him, and he tried to work as quickly as he could. He wished he could tell Ezra to not be ashamed, that he had the same wants and needs, but he was still afraid of what it could mean if he did. That Ezra might not take him up on it, or that he _would._

“I made it to fit you,” Emmerich said then, if only to distract them both from what he was doing. If they kept speaking, there would not be any strange silences.

Ezra flicked his fingers against the back of Emmerich’s head. “And you knew my measurements how?” His voice was playful again, and Emmerich was glad of it.

“Took them while you were sleeping,” he said, before he could think better of the jest. He hadn’t done so, not at all—he simply had a good eye for dimensions and had rightly guessed Ezra’s.

Ezra’s smile faltered, his eyes uncertain, and he seemed at a loss for what to say next.

“I only estimated,” Emmerich said, more quietly. “That’s all.”

“Emery—“ Ezra began, but then fell silent and did not speak again until Emmerich was climbing back to his feet.

“There,” he said, moving a distance away and looked Ezra over. The collection of metal pieces and cut bits of braces made a strange addition to the side of Ezra’s body, but would be hardly noticeable if worn beneath clothes. Or so was the idea. Ezra was bending himself at the middle, curving over to examine the full appearance of the mechanisms.

“All right,” he said, glancing up again with a smile. “Now what is it?”

Emmerich went and retrieved the stuffed jute sack whilst Ezra watched, hands braced on his hips. He propped it up in one of the chairs, resting against the back of it lengthwise. Not the most functional set up, but it might do for a simple demonstration. He turned the chair about so that it faced Ezra.

“Now put your knee into it,” Emmerich said to him. “As if it were a man.”

Ezra briefly raised his brow, but he did so. He crossed the floor, put a hand to the chair’s back, and smoothly and swiftly raised his knee into the stuffed sack. Emmerich heard the tinny sounds of parts working, a sharp shing of metal. There was also a soft thunk as the new blade in his boot sliced through the fabric, and struck the wood back of the chair. Ezra’s eyes widened a bit. 

“Oh,” he said. “I see.”

When he withdrew his knee, there was a narrow but rather neat slash in the jute. The smooth sound and motion of the blade withdrawing cleanly back into the mechanism when Ezra put his boot to the floor again was also quite satisfying. Emmerich hadn’t known how smoothly all of it would go when fully affixed to a person, but it was functioning as hoped for. The blade was fully hidden from sight in the top of Ezra’s boot when retracted, and at a good strong angle from the kneecap when triggered—easy to sink into a man’s gut, or thigh, or whatever body part could be most easily reached.

“Where’s the knife from?” Ezra said. “Not mine, is it?”

“There were several small blades in with the rest of it,” Emmerich said, gesturing to the crate upon the table. “Yours would have had too much weight besides.”

Ezra raised his leg again tentatively, moving his knee about. “Won’t it come out too easily while just walking?” 

“No; you’ve got to set this spring at your belt, just here—“ Emmerich touched Ezra’s hip, quick and brief, “every time, before the mechanism will trigger. Try walking.”

Ezra took an obedient stroll round the table, looking down at the rigged boot the entire time he did so. But the blade stayed sheathed within the hidden pocket and didn’t reappear until Ezra triggered the spring and then propped his foot up on a chair.

“This really is quite clever,” he said, glancing over at Emmerich. “How did you come up with it?”

Emmerich shrugged away the pleasure that the praise raised in him. “It was something I always wanted to try. Allister was always fascinated by blades hidden up sleeves, but those are easily guessed and easily found. No one looks here. I’ve had the design in mind for a while, just no opportunity or means to try.”

“Why did you make it for me, and not yourself?”

“I—“ For a moment, Emmerich was entirely unsure of an answer. Then, “you’re already comfortable with a blade, whereas I’m not. I thought it would be a better start with you.”

Ezra gave a nod, as if this was perfectly reasonable, and Emmerich let his breath out again. His protective instincts towards Ezra were going to give him away if he wasn’t more careful about them. It might just make Ezra angry, that Emmerich appeared to think he needed to be looked after like a child. It was only that...after so very long, he again had something that he couldn’t bear to lose. Protecting Ezra was like protecting himself. Emmerich needed him. The same way he thought Ezra might need him in turn.

“And they’re after you mostly,” Emmerich added, a belated afterthought that made Ezra frown and look away. He sat down at the table and folded his hands upon its surface. Against his leg, the mechanism clinked softly.

“You could still leave, you know,” he said, after a few more moments. “Seeing as they are after me mostly. If you went away from all this...I doubt they would keep after you for long.”

“No,” Emmerich said. “I won’t. I told you before I won’t. There’s nothing worth more than what’s here.”

“Your life, perhaps,” Ezra suggested, but his cheeks were pink and he still wasn’t looking Emmerich’s way.

“And what would I go back to?” Emmerich said. Hauling crates for near no wages, picking pockets, dodging constables, nights spent in the squalor of the Brokens, going to his knees more often than not—none of it was anything he could bear to do again. Perhaps this partnership with Ezra was far more dangerous, but he also had choices he’d never been given before, more freedoms than he’d had in years. He felt that he could do anything he wanted to, now that he was no longer shackled to Allister or to the close or to anything else that he had not chosen.

He also had a friend. A man who would stand at his back or at his side, wherever he was needed, and for whom Emmerich would do the same.

Ezra was watching him from across the room. His hands were still folded neatly before him, but there was a tension in them and in his shoulders, and he seemed overly still and hushed.

“No,” Emmerich said again. “I wouldn’t leave you for anything.”

#

The places that Allister and Kegg had housed their operations were all empty. There was no sign of either crew, as though they had all simply uprooted and disappeared into the underworld of the city.

Neither Emmerich nor Ezra took this as an uplifting sign. They could not imagine anything good out of this disappearance, especially one so sudden and complete. They could find hardly a trace of either gang, or of anyone who seemed to know anything of where they had gone. Certainly nothing that told them if they had joined together as one crew permanently, or if Staard and Clavel were still working independent operations in the wake of their leaders’ deaths. 

By midday they had come to the last place that either of them knew of, a stone tenement building above the thick, dirty streets of the Bowbuttle market that had been a place of moving goods for Kegg. Yet this building was empty as well. Dust coated shelves and the corners of the room in gaping patterns that betrayed a recent presence of removed objects, from large crates to small boxes. There was a lingering smell in the air, of smoke and sweat and gunpowder, but nothing else.

“They must be expecting us to be looking for them,” Ezra said. “Must have heard what we got our hands on.”

“I hardly believe they think us that much of a threat, even with a few more bullets at our use,” Emmerich said from where he stood near a window. Though it was Sunday, there was still a bit of business going on in the marketplace below—punishable, of course, if noted by a constable. But several of them were bribed to overlook it. “Certainly not that they’d need to _hide_ from us.”

“Well,” Ezra said, crouching down and touching his fingers to a dark stain upon the floor that looked of spilled drink. “Perhaps not _us._ ”

“You mean yourself, then,” Emmerich said. He was trying quite hard to imagine how this pretty young boy could possibly have frightened an entire pack of grown men that badly, enough that they would want to keep themselves from his way.

“Emery, perhaps it’s not been clear to you that I’m not a good man,” Ezra said then, rising back to his feet. “We’ve been allies, and friends, and you’ve seen the more pleasant parts of me because of it. But I didn’t get Kegg to take an interest in me because of my manners or my breeding. The work I did for him was not the same of what you did for Allister. There’s very little I haven’t done, none of it delicate or clean.”

It startled Emmerich to heard Ezra speak of himself this way, and so matter-of-fact, as though there was no other way about it. But then he thought of the way Ezra had terrified Marcellin Chambért by whispering mere words to him, how he had so easily suggested that they kill Chambért’s nephew if he would not speak, and the way the men at the Thistledown had spoken of him, how he had casually shot a half-stunned man in the throat on the rooftops. Perhaps none of that made Ezra a truly wicked man, but there might be reason that the men who had known him might be more wary of him than Emmerich had thought.

Ezra sighed and rose to his feet again, tucking strands of hair back off his face. Dusty light came in at the window and cut across his shoulder, gleamed brightly against his shirt through the tear in his coat sleeve.

“Well, nothing for it, then,” he said. “We wait for them to find us. Meanwhile, we keep an ear to the ground, in hopes we catch a hint of their whereabouts.”

“Is that truly the best course to take?”

“Have you another suggestion?” Ezra said, and moved to catch Emmerich's arm when he frowned and turned away. “Honestly, Emery, I would hear anything you have to say about it.”

“No, I’ve no other idea,” Emmerich admitted. “It only seems, well...rather passive. I’m not fond of sitting and waiting for a threat to come to me.”

Ezra pinched at the hem of Emmerich’s coat, playing with the fabric there. “Neither am I,” he said. “The only thing left to do would be to ask openly about, and that’s more vulnerable than I’m willing to make myself. I’m certain they want to find us on their own terms, not to be taken unawares. Perhaps they’re even watching these places, to see if we come to them, and aim to follow us away to see where we go.”

“We oughtn't go straight back from here, then.”

“No, certainly not,” Ezra agreed. He let go of Emmerich’s coat, and laid his hand on his shoulder instead. “We can wander about the city for the rest of the day, I suppose, as we’ve nothing else doing. Any part of it in particular you favor?”

Emmerich lifted a shoulder at first, as he did not think Ezra much shared his interest for the missionary schools and it was a rather far way, besides. Although, if they were simply meaning to aimlessly range about for some time...then surely it didn’t matter how long of a journey it was. He was only about to say so when Ezra began to speak instead. 

“Then I would like to take you to see something,” he said. “Would you come with me?”

“Yes, all right,” Emmerich said, and Ezra smiled oddly.

“You didn't even ask where I mean to take you.”

“I assume you’ve a reason for it,” said Emmerich. “I’d like to know it, whatever you would have me see.”

“All right,” said Ezra, with a much realer smile. “Then let’s off.”

#

Emmerich had never been this far into the central city before. Once he had gone as far as the outskirts of Bridehart Tor, wanting to see the grand missionary schools there, but had balked before even coming close. While it was easy to lose oneself amongst the bustle and crowded streets of the more affluent marketplaces, any man of his dress and general appearance was an eyesore in the splendid streets of these less turbulent districts. Beggars and thieves did not fare well here, and constables patrolled often and thoroughly. Even now, with a man at his side who knew the district, Emmerich could not be at ease.

Perhaps it was in part the very buildings themselves, which were fine solid stone and brick, and stood like long somber faces at either sides of the streets. Unmovable and with far more presence than the stout factories or the rickety buildings of the slums, and with a grandness to them that left Emmerich in slight awe. And not only the buildings themselves—blinkered glossy horses pulled fine carriages down the roads, and trundling between them were the mechanical carts that puffed steam and clanked noisily over the cobbles, all brightly trimmed in gleaming metal and painted in rich colors. Just as bright were the dresses of the women who swept along the pavement, and their hats, all a colorful clutter against the darker garb of their male companions.

“This is Paxstone Circus,” Ezra told him. “It’s where my family keeps a residence. We're nearly there.” 

“Oh,” Emmerich said, and had nothing more to say. 

Ezra looked to Emmerich, and took him by the wrist. “We won’t be troubled,” he said. “I know my way here.”

It was not another minute before they arrived in a large residential square, with rows of terraced houses with a shady green in the center and a wide cobbled lane that ran between them. Emmerich tried quite hard not to marvel openly at the intricacy and work that were apparent in even just the iron of the gates that ran before the houses, not to mention in the masonry and in the glass of the windows. He might have stopped walking altogether just to stare, if not for Ezra leading him firmly along by the wrist across the road and into the green.

It was certainly lovely here, quiet and peaceful, the trees planted here shivering in the breeze. A man and woman dressed in finery strolled together on a path beneath them, as the pale wintry sun cut short shadows beneath their feet. Ezra and Emmerich kept from their way, avoiding paths entirely and moving instead on the grass among the trees. Their clothes and general state of grubbiness would be a certain giveaway that they did not belong.

A bronze monument of a man mounted upon a horse sat near the center of the common, the top of its stone base higher than Emmerich’s head. Ezra took them past it, but stopped before they came near the other edge of the green. They stood together in the shadows of the trees, looking towards the row of terraced houses, and Ezra still held on to Emmerich’s wrist.

“That one there,” he said quietly. “The one with the L on the gate.”

L was a letter Emmerich was quite good at recognizing, as it was in his own name. And as such, he could pick out the gate of the residence easily—the tall wrought ironwork and large glass lanterns set upon the posts, the gleaming white trim against the slate-grey brick. It was both beautiful and cold, identical to those around it except for the monogrammed gates.

“Your family’s, then.”

Ezra nodded. “It’s called Hystead House.” 

“But there’s an L on the gate.”

“That’s for our surname. Hystead is from my father’s title, and therefore the house’s.”

“This is all very complicated,” Emmerich said, and at last Ezra smiled.

“Yes, I suppose it would be,” he said. He was fingering the edges of his coat, and as he spoke he glanced at the gash in the sleeve that Luca had made with his knife. “Rather second nature to me, however.”

Emmerich could say nothing to that, nor was he sure if Ezra expected him to reply. They stayed standing in the hushed, shifting shadows of the trees and neither of them spoke nor moved. Emmerich had stopped watching the house, which was unlikely to do anything else worth seeing, and was instead studying Ezra from the side of his vision. The boy’s head was slightly lowered, his chin tucked nearer his collar than usual, and his eyelashes flickered. But he kept his eyes up, fixed on the house of his family’s name.

“You come back often,” Emmerich said, unsure if it was a question or not.

After a moment, Ezra said, “No. Only twice since.”

Emmerich wondered if that was for Ezra's own sake or for his family's, if it was to save himself from seeing them going about their lives or to prevent the risk them catching sight of their disowned and dishonored son. “Do you miss it?”

“I don’t miss who I was in that life. I was...” Ezra sighed and gave a distant smile, “a spoilt, silly little boy. And I would have turned out a spoilt, silly man in the end. No matter what I am now, it’s better than that.”

“Surely you weren’t all that bad,” Emmerich said.

“No, I was worse.” Ezra tilted his face up to Emmerich then, a mirthless expression there. “Nothing like you.”

Emmerich could not remember at this moment what he had told Ezra about his own childhood that would make him say this, and was about to say so when the clopping sound of horses’ hooves caught both of their notice. A covered carriage of dark maroon and brown was coming along the street, drawn by two glossy horses with dark coats. The large spoked wheels were colored inside with red, and the doors were of fine detail with glass windows. A driver in a neat uniform sat up front, but Emmerich did not get a much clearer look at him before Ezra had seized his elbow and dragged him backwards.

“That’s my family’s carriage,” Ezra said in a whisper. He pulled Emmerich behind a nearby tree as the carriage settled to a stop in the road and the driver climbed down. They still had a good view of the back and part of the side of the carriage closest to the row of residences, and thus could see quite well when the carriage door was opened up.

A young woman stepped down from it, a girl who was some years younger than Ezra. Her hair was as dark as his, her build just as slender, and though Emmerich could not make out her face clearly from this distance, he already imagined that they would look very much alike in their features. She wore a high-collared dress of dark blue and a small cap that matched. A parasol swung from the crook of her elbow. She spoke a quiet word to the driver, who closed the carriage door and went round the back to a luggage board.

“Oh, Hannah,” said Ezra quietly at Emmerich’s side. Emmerich did not ask, nor did he think he needed to. Clearly a younger sister of Ezra’s. She looked quite lovely and refined, ascending the steps of what Ezra had called Hystead House. The driver followed her, laden down with several carpetbags.

“Oi, you two there!”

Emmerich and Ezra both whirled about. Two patrolling constables of the clergy guard, white crosses bright upon their helmets, were bearing down on them from across the green. One was brandishing his truncheon.

“Oh, _honestly_ ,” Ezra muttered. Then, as he was wont to do when such things happened, he caught Emmerich’s hand and began to run.

Escaping the constables was easy—the men hardly gave chase once they were beyond the square, and Ezra knew this part of the city as well as he knew the poor districts and rookeries. He was even laughing by the time he pulled them both to a stop around a corner in a narrow alley, bracing himself over his knees in his mirth.

“That was just as easy as when I was a child,” Ezra said, breathlessly. “I used to sneak out at all hours, especially when I was meant to be doing something I wasn’t fond of—sums, or the violoncello, which I was terrible at to begin with. The constables were just as slow then.”

He lifted his head with something of a sly smile on his face. The alley was narrow enough that even being against its opposite walls put them quite near each other, and with them both leaning forward as they were, their shoulders were nearly touching. They were not directly facing each other, set a bit apart against the opposite walls, but Emmerich could feel the boy’s breath and the heat of him as Ezra could likely feel the same. Ezra’s eyes had gone dark and focused on Emmerich in a way that sent a frisson of anticipation up through the core of him. He felt a touch upon his hand, and quite badly wanted to allow this.

And yet, he could not.

“My father was a farrier,” Emmerich said, and Ezra went suddenly still. Their hands fell apart. “He kept a small workshop in our village. Once my mother died it was the only way he had to support us, myself and my brother and sister. But sometimes, if he hadn’t enough work or there wasn’t enough need for what he made, the only way to keep the shop itself was to borrow. He had debts because of it, greater than he could have ever paid, and he met his death because of them. But without the shop, our family wouldn’t have even survived as long as we did.”

Ezra leant back against the bricks then, tilting his head to the wall and looking at Emmerich with heavy eyes. “Oh, Emery,” he said, his tone subdued. “What you must think of me.”

“I wasn’t—” Emmerich began, but Ezra shook his head.

“The things I said to Luca...no wonder you told me to quiet myself about it. I truly did have no right.”

“We both know you didn’t intend to be cruel.”

“And yet I was, to both of you.” 

“But Luca doesn’t know why you wouldn’t understand. I do.”

“Do you,” said Ezra, with a sudden twist of his mouth. “It seems as though you should understand me just as poorly as I do you.”

“I didn’t mean—”

But Ezra had drawn himself up, a hardness in his mouth and a furrow between his brows. “No, of course. You’ve only heard a small part of my past, seen a small part of how I lived, of course you understand it all so perfectly.”

“ _Ezra.”_

“I’m very sorry about your father,” Ezra said, before setting his shoulders and striding out from the narrow alley. Emmerich gave a sigh and after a moment followed after him, knowing there was very little else he could do.

#

 

Emmerich was quite sure that if in fact they had ever been being tracked by any of Clavel or Staard’s men, they had long lost them. Still, Ezra did not head back towards the print house. Instead he took them back to the Thistledown, by way of alleys and roundabouts and occasionally rooftops. Neither of them spoke, and Emmerich was resigned to following the hard set line of Ezra’s shoulders. He was unsure what exactly had upset the boy this way; perhaps just seeing his old home and his sister, perhaps something Emmerich had said—though he could not think of what.

The streets around the brothel were far less crowded with the usual trudge of working people, seeing as it was Sunday, but there was a small crowd hanging about the brothel doors. Rough men smoking and talking in low voices, lurking inside their own little cloud of bitter smoke. One of them had his arm about a thin and rather dark-complexioned girl who was clearly employed of the place. She clung against his side with a look that Emmerich knew very well—a fierce mix of both necessity and repulsion. Emmerich could not even meet her eyes as they passed, a feel of cold iron in his belly.

He was quite glad to see Vena in the foyer, and perhaps even more so that Ezra did not appear to notice her. Instead he disappeared into the working portion of the building, the steam and heat from the still room, and left Emmerich by himself. Emmerich did not mind this at all, and went instead to speak with Vena. She was sitting upon the sofa beside another girl, one who was older and more full-figured than she, perhaps of Ezra’s age. Her hair was a fine reddish-gold, straight as straw, and her skin smattered with light speckles. She and Vena were gripping tight at each other’s hands and had their gazes quite riveted in the direction of the far back room behind the stair.

Emmerich glanced that way himself. In the dimness of that room, Miss Ingsbel and a short ruddy-faced man of some girth sat at a table together, deep in some discussion. The man appeared to likely be a client of the place, and he twisted a yellowed handkerchief between rough and stubby fingers. There was agitation in his movements, compared to Miss Ingsbel’s glass-like stillness across from him.

Vena turned her head a bit then and noticed Emmerich standing there. “Oh, hello, Emmerich,” she said, and peered around. “Is Ezra about, then?”

Because it would only be natural to assume the two of them would be together. “Oh, somewhere,” Emmerich said, and took a place on the small threadbare shepherdess chair beside the settee. This seemed to alarm Innogen, as it placed him closest to her, and she looked at him rather warily. A strange reaction, Emmerich thought, for a girl of her occupation. 

“This is Emmerich,” Vena said to her. “You needn’t worry about him—“ and she leaned in to finish speaking in the girl’s ear. Emmerich frowned, but both girls only shared a smile with each other.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Innogen then, strangely polite and in such a full brogue that Emmerich could hardly understand her. He was most used to the accents of the city, and Innogen was clearly not from here.

“And you as well,” he said. He glanced once more over towards Miss Ingsbel and her companion. “What’s happening there?”

“Oh,” said Vena, as Innogen paled and gripped at her hand more tightly. “That man there hopes to make a purchase.”

“Of what—” Emmerich began, but at that moment both Miss Ingsbel and the man across from her rose from the table. The man’s face was rather redder than before, his cheeks puffed in irritation, and did not share the same calm that Miss Ingsbel was keeping quite well at hand. He shoved his handkerchief into a pocket of his coat and strode towards the front doors as quickly as his bulk would allow him to, only casting one look back as he went.

In the meanwhile, Miss Ingsbel made her way over to the corner of the parlor in which Vena, Innogen, and Emmerich sat. Her eyes passed briefly over Emmerich, with something near to disinterest at first. Then she seemed to recognize him, and her countenance became more familiar. 

“Mr Mandelbrauss, back again,” said Miss Ingsbel. “I see that I didn’t quite scare you off full proper.”

“Not as such, miss, no,” Emmerich said.

“Well,” she said. “Good. There’s hope for you yet.”

“Miss Ingsbel,” said Innogen then, half rising from the sofa in her anxiety. She was clutching handfuls of her skirts and wringing at them with white-knuckled fingers. “Will I stay?"

“I told you that for as long as you ask for protection under my roof, you shall have it,” said Miss Ingsbel, touching a hand to the top of Innogen’s bright hair. “I do not sell people like common chattel.”

Innogen burst into tears. But despite the startlingness of them, they seemed to be in happiness. She threw her arms about both Miss Ingsbel and Vena in turn, and then ran for the stairs, holding up her skirts to keep from stumbling over them.

“I suppose she’s gone to unpack her things again,” Miss Ingsbel remarked.

Emmerich rose from his chair, moving nearer to her. “That was kind of you,” he said, and Miss Ingsbel glanced him over.

“Not kind, no,” she said. “It should not be a kindness to treat a person not as goods or property.”

“But not all others would do the same. Especially here.” Emmerich then remembered their last conversation, how she had not appreciated any insinuation of a disregard for the well-being of her girls. “I mean no slight, Miss Insbel.”

Miss Ingsbel looked at him carefully for a long moment. Perhaps she saw something in his face, drew an understanding from him that she had not had before, as she touched a hand lightly to his arm in a way that was only reassuring. “You ought to call me Sophrona, as you are neither client nor employee.”

“Then you should call me Emmerich,” Emmerich said, quite sure that neither of them were going to do so. Miss Ingsbel’s knowing smile told him the same.

Just at that moment Ezra reentered the parlor along with Lilin, who was dressed in the same tawdry fashion he had been before; trousers that fit him too tightly and a shirt that fit too loosely. He had Ezra by the wrist, taking him eagerly along towards the stairs. Both were smiling and rather flushed, and Ezra happened to turn his head and catch Emmerich’s eye over Miss Ingsbel’s shoulder. He faltered in his steps, his eyes flicking between Emmerich and the back of Miss Ingsbel’s dark head. Emmerich found his voice wavering at the back of his throat, wanting to say something, to call out, but he did not know what.

But then Lilin came back to Ezra and slipped an arm about his waist, speaking into his ear and beginning to draw him forward again. And Ezra went with him, breaking his gaze from Emmerich’s. They climbed the stairs together and disappeared along the landing.

Emmerich found himself suddenly upon the settee, that he had somehow sat down without being aware of it. His blood fluttered in his throat and there came again that same cold feeling of iron in his stomach, a band around his chest that would not yield to his breathing. Only Vena was left near him—Miss Ingsbel had gone.

“Oh, Emmerich,” Vena said, and put a thin hand to his shoulder. “I _am_ sorry.”

“No, it’s...all right,” Emmerich found his voice very dull and strange to his own ears. “We were never—it only surprised me.”

“You were never?” Vena asked, and sounded startled. “But—“

“Don’t make anything of it, please.” Emmerich caught her wrist, gently, and held. “Not to him.”

Because he knew well by now how Ezra and Vena got, how they flared up at each other over anything and everything. He did not want Vena angry at Ezra for his sake. It was his own fault that Ezra did not know what Emmerich wanted, because he had been too cowardly to let it show. And he had clearly seen the interest Ezra and Lilin had in each other. It had all played out as he had allowed it to, and there was no blaming of anyone but himself for it.

“He’ll never realize he’s hurt you,” Vena said then. Her hand was still upon his shoulder, holding firm. “So if you’ve got to be angry with him, choose to be so over something he’ll understand. It’s what I do, mostly.”

“He hasn’t hurt me,” Emmerich said. “I’ve done it well enough myself.”

“But—”

“Is there something I could do here?” Emmerich asked her, before she got any further. “Repairs, or maybe you’ve a door hinge that squeaks or a latch that won’t turn. I’ll not charge a fee, I only need something to do with myself.” 

“There’s a chair with its leg come off,” Vena said, a frown tugging at her mouth. But she said nothing further upon the topic of Ezra.

It was nearly a full hour later that Ezra and Lilin came back down the stairs. Ezra did not look as though he’d been rolled about in a bed, but Lilin seemed so pleased with himself that Emmerich could assume nothing else. After all, there were plenty of things to be done that did not leave one mussed at the end of them. Emmerich could not even look at either of them, and instead kept himself mindlessly occupied with the furniture. He had set the leg of one chair to rights and evened out the tilt of a small table, and had just begun on the foyer’s cheval mirror—perhaps once a centerpiece to the room, but now cast aside to a corner because of its cracked glass and loss of its silvering in spots. Still, it was serviceable, although a pivot pin had worked its way half out of the frame. Emmerich had only just managed to lever it back into place when a hand came down heavy on his shoulder.

“It’s time we left,” said Ezra’s voice, and his tone was far more amiable than it had been since Paxstone Circus. Emmerich did not want to think on why. “What exactly are you doing?”

“Making myself useful,” Emmerich said, rising off his knee back to his feet. “Have you finished then?”

“I suppose.”

“Then we can go.”

#

As it was a Sunday, the print house was empty and Ezra and Emmerich entered through the downstairs instead of the back staircase to their room. Emmerich was just as glad of it, as he wasn’t sure he and Ezra would do well stuck in a small space together at the moment. The air between them was tense enough. 

Emmerich sat himself in a chair near a drafting table whilst Ezra prowled the length of the work room towards Luca’s office, calling out for the man. After a moment Emmerich let his head rest into his hands and closed his eyes. It was pleasant there, in the darkness behind them, and for a moment he could forget the arduous day behind them and the uncertainty before them.

Footsteps came back down the workroom floor then, heavy and seeming rather frustrated.

Emmerich glanced up from his hands. “Luca?”

“Not here,” Ezra said with irritation, and removed his pistol from the back of his belt and threw himself down in a chair. He leant back and raked a hand through his hair, frowning slightly. His cheered mood from earlier had disappeared, and Emmerich himself was not in one much better. 

He no longer cared about their earlier words in the alley, or whether Ezra could ever understand his life or if he could ever understand Ezra’s, it mattered so little. Perhaps it would always be a small chasm they could not cross, a bridge they could never build to meet properly. But there was plenty more between them that they did both understand, more things in the present that they knew than things from the past they didn’t. Whatever disagreement they had had seemed rather petty now. 

What was in his mind instead was the sight of Lilin, taking Ezra by the wrist and leading him upstairs, and the heat that filled his head was red and senseless with jealousy. He oughtn’t care so much, he knew it, and yet those same protective instincts for Ezra that he couldn’t rid himself of were twisting, becoming something else that was possessive and selfish and shameless. He couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else touching Ezra in any way—whether their aim was to hurt or please him.

“ _Lilin_ ,” he bit out suddenly, helplessly. “Did you sleep with him?”

Ezra made a startled sound and looked to him. “I—what? Emery, why—no. _Ich tat nicht._ No.”

Relief ran through Emmerich in such strength that had he not been already sitting down, he would have needed to. He covered his face with his hands, breathing into the stifled dark behind his fingers, afraid to leave it again and be forced to face Ezra and anything he might say. He could feel Ezra’s eyes on him even now, watching him. Because the question had been inappropriate, impulsive and bitter, and only someone with an interest in whom Ezra bedded would have asked it. He had no explainable reason to have that interest; not one he was willing to share.

When he managed to take his hands from his face, he made them move down to his holster to retrieve his own revolver. He swung the chamber out and emptied the rounds, for no other reason than that he needed something to do with his hands, to keep them from shaking, to keep himself from looking at Ezra.

“Emery.”

“Hm.” Emmerich concentrated on the bullets, lining them up a careful row before him, for no beneficial purpose. He simply had to do anything he could but look at Ezra. 

“Emmerich.”

_“Ja, was?”_

“Emery, look at me.”

 _“Was ist los?_ ” Emmerich snapped, slamming the bulldog down to the table. The bullets toppled over and rolled about, shuddered and clinked together. “ _Ich bin beschäftigt!_ ”

“Do it,” Ezra said, still quite calm.

Emmerich spoke through his teeth. “ _Was meinst du?”_

“I mean; what it is that you want to do.” Ezra tilted his head, shifting suddenly forward onto his elbow. The table creaked softly beneath him. His eyes were very bright. “Do it.”

Emmerich took in a hard breath and rose from his chair. But Ezra stood with him, grasping his wrist. Emmerich faltered then, his breath stuttering in his throat. Ezra’s eyes were full of something strange and hot, and there was an edge of a smile on his lips.

“I said, do it,” Ezra said, and caught the front of Emmerich’s shirt in one hand. “ _Jetzt.”_

It was too much—all this time of holding back, of easing and tiptoing around Ezra and _so careful_ not to do anything like what he’d just done, but now Ezra was _telling_ him to. He threw a hand around the back of Ezra’s neck and caught at the base of his head, cradling him with splayed fingers and pulling him close, their bodies flush together. Ezra’s breath hitched and caught, but his eyes were bright and eager and just as challenging as they’d been a moment ago. He wasn’t reconsidering.

He wasn’t waiting, either. Emmerich didn’t have time to do anything further himself before Ezra seized him by the collar and keeled him against the table, throwing him down on his back and climbing atop him. Emmerich gripped at Ezra’s shoulders and turned them about, bullets hard beneath his shoulders and the emptied pistol pressed between them. Ezra fumbled it out of the way—it thunked to the table and fell out of Emmerich’s care entirely—and then his hands squirmed between them, pushing fabric aside until hot skin pressed together and Emmerich could feel Ezra’s ribs grinding hard against his and smell a sharp, spiced scent that was so familiarly Ezra’s that he could hardly catch his breath.

Emmerich dragged his mouth up Ezra’s throat to taste him, scraping his teeth against his skin until sinking them gently into soft skin—Ezra groaned and jerked against him, their hips rolling firmly together. Emmerich caught a handful of his hair and yanked him up for a rough bite of a kiss, all teeth and bone and heat. His other hand caught Ezra’s wrist, slid up palm to palm, caught their fingers together and pressed them down to the table. The metal ring of bullets rolling off to the floor was distant and unimportant.

There wasn’t time for anything, no removal of clothing or even opening of trousers and they were thrusting together through cloth, Emmerich grunting helplessly through his teeth and Ezra making soft low noises as he spread his legs wider apart and clamped his knees against Emmerich’s thighs. The table squeaked and thumped below them as their movements grew faster, more desperate; Ezra clawed into Emmerich’s back and dug at his skin with his free hand, his body taught and flexing beneath Emmerich’s weight. Emmerich pressed his bared teeth to Ezra’s collarbone, panting and heaving while his belly burned with heat and his fingers twisted so tightly with Ezra’s that it felt as if they had ground down to their bones and left no flesh remaining.

It didn’t take either of them very long. Ezra’s final cry echoed about the quiet workroom floor, echoing down the rows of silent machines into the shadowed corners, and his hands stilled on Emmerich’s back. Emmerich heaved out a gasp of his own and bit down into Ezra’s shoulder, all of him pulled taut and aching, and the world became a cluster of colored spots and flashes to his eyes. When he came back to himself, Ezra was huffing and smiling beneath him, his eyes closed and one hand tangling lazily in the back of Emmerich’s dampened hair.

“Mm,” Ezra said. “Oh.”

Emmerich couldn’t even manage that much; he rested his head against Ezra’s shoulder and listened to his own heart beat hard against his ribs, heard it fluttering down to a gentler rhythm slowly, slowly. He held Ezra close against him and shut his eyes, a soft fear beating in his chest. If Ezra did not want to make something significant of this, Emmerich would not insist. But he would make this moment last, press the heat of it into his memory like a wax seal, and keep it there.

It was a few long minutes before either of them spoke, and it was Ezra who broke the silence first. “I’ve wanted to do that for so very long now,” he said, pressing the words against the edge of Emmerich’s mouth that he could reach..

A faint swell of hope pressed itself outwards from within him. “Why _didn’t_ you?”

“I hardly knew that you wouldn’t mind it!” Ezra said, and laughed. “I've...never tried to do something like this before; catch another man's interest in that way, and I didn't know how successful I was being at it, or if you were even so inclined. I only thought, perhaps, sometimes—you must realize that you aren’t easy to understand.”

Emmerich reached to catch Ezra's dampened face between his hands. “And what about just now?”

“Just now, I was tired of waiting.”

“ _Ich bin froh, das zu hören,”_ Emmerich said, and kissed him properly. Ezra laughed into his mouth and Emmerich tried to swallow the noise, drag it deep inside him and keep it there so he could remember it always, Ezra sounding just like this, just for him. Emmerich could feel the boy readying again against his own body—he was somewhat younger, after all, quicker to recover—and he moved his legs apart, settling Ezra more firmly against him.

But Ezra’s hand went out, caught his wrist, held him still. “Wait. Not again like this. Take me to bed.”

For a moment, Emmerich’s ears rang with the words, hearing but not understanding. And then, “You would...want that?”

Ezra let his head drop back to the table with a groan, but he was smiling. “What do you think this was all _about,_ Emmerich? This was very nice, but—far less intimate than I’ve been wanting with you. So, can we get to our bed?”

“Oh,” Emmerich said, and closed his eyes against the swell of relief and joy that had been suddenly let loose in his chest. “Of course.”

#

Emmerich undressed Ezra with shaking hands in the quiet and dim of their own room, drew him carefully to the bed that had always been theirs, and laid him out upon it. Ezra chest rose and fell rapidly with his breathing, his eyes watching every movement Emmerich made with rapt attention. There was an oddly frightened quality about him, and Emmerich thought that he might know what had brought it on. It seemed very likely now that Ezra had only ever been with one man, the brother of his fiancée. And Emmerich had been with far more than that. 

But Ezra had loved his one man, and Emmerich never had any of his. He was not certain he even knew how to do this act in a loving way, though he was desperate to. So it was different for both of them, and more uncertain now that they’d already got the edge off against the printing table and were hesitantly naked together, pale under the thin light that streamed in through the round window. Ezra must be wary of how Emmerich could hurt him, just as Emmerich was afraid of the same.

So Emmerich went to him carefully, made his hands gentle and his movements slow, took care of his boy as best he could. Ezra’s body still had a clumsiness to it, an inelegance of youth that had never before been obvious when he was running rooftops or climbing walls or wielding his pistol, but was now evident in the way his legs and arms tangled about Emmerich’s waist and didn’t quite know how to hold on, elbows and knees knocking about. He made wonderful noises, little yelps and gasps that Emmerich drank out of his mouth and smeared back against his skin. Emmerich himself was lost in the heat of him, marveling at the realness of the boy in his arms and breathless in the fervor of true wanting, of a desire felt equally.

Ezra curled up to Emmerich afterwards, flung a lazy arm across his chest and kicked a leg between his and went to sleep almost at once, snuffling hot breaths against his shoulder. Emmerich stayed awake, stroking an absent hand through Ezra’s hair and staring at the broad beams of the ceiling, wishing for a cigarette or at the very least, a drink. His head ached, and despite the lightness in his chest there was a heaviness in his gut.

It was what he had been wanting. From nearly the moment he had laid eyes on Ezra, it was what he had wanted. Though it had slowly turned from a base desire into something more aching, more genuine, it had been constant enough with him that this should have eased it some of it. He should have been happy; content. And yet he wasn’t. But it was a different sort of fear now, not of what Ezra thought or wanted of him, but what others would. Perhaps a fear that had been there all along, an old one planted when he had been young and grown with him all his life.

The two of them were outlaws already. This could do very little further harm to them. Ezra had already lost everything. Emmerich had nothing to begin with. Ezra had long ago suggested they stay together, but he hadn’t meant in this way, and that would only make things twice as dangerous if they were. Acts such as this between men were something done only in the dark, in the shadows, hidden away and never spoken of for fear of the noose—or worse. And to take another man as a lasting lover was...something Emmerich had never heard of. Not done as seriously or as lasting as a man took a wife.

So it would be better for both of them if they stayed neither as allies nor as lovers, and parted ways entirely. Because Emmerich now knew he could not have one without the other, so it was simply too dangerous to have either. Ezra already had more troubles than years; Emmerich didn’t need to add to his problems, or become one of them himself.

But Emmerich also couldn’t leave him. As much as pulling away was the best thing to do, the safest and wisest, he couldn’t. He had promised. And, the idea of leaving Ezra chilled him deeply and sunk a hollow pit in his stomach so gaping that he could hardly catch his breath. The fear of that was stronger than any he had of being caught at this, but it was still the most difficult choice to make.

#

Emmerich fell asleep in the late afternoon and woke into dark. The air of the room was cramped and still and warm, thick with their breathing and the leftover scents of their earlier exertions. Ezra was still curled up to his side, hand beneath his own cheek, dark head tucked up under Emmerich’s arm. He was smiling in his sleep, a gentle expression that started a quiet aching in Emmerich’s chest. This boy trusted him, cared for him, was more of a family than Emmerich’d had in years, and he deserved better than all of this, better than anything Emmerich could give him in return. 

Emmerich got up carefully, unwinding himself from Ezra and covering him back up carefully with the blanket. Ezra only shifted and sighed under his touch, catching sleepily at Emmerich’s hand and tangling their fingers together. Emmerich held still for the fragile moment before their hands slid apart again, and he could move away from the bedside.

He went to his customary place at the window, a view familiar to him now at any hour of the day. The moon drifted behind wispy clouds, shining through the greasy sky of the shipyards and factories. Gaslamps burned along the river, greenish in the low fog that crawled out from the riverbed. He thought of Archie, of nearly ten years spent hiding the things they did together, never speaking of them and never admitting them, and knew he could not do that again. Not with Ezra.

Some time later, Emmerich heard the sound of Ezra shifting, sitting up and pushing the blankets aside. The floorboards creaked beneath him. After a moment, he joined Emmerich at the window, weak moonlight painted over his arms and dark hair. He was naked, the still-healing scar on his arm standing out white and silver. Emmerich could hardly look at him. His heart hammered in his chest and his palms sweated against the window sill.

“You’re all right?” Ezra said, after a few moments. Emmerich nodded, words trapped within his throat. Then, so casual that it couldn’t possibly be, Ezra added, “Regrets?”

“No. Yes. _Ich weiß nicht._ Ezra—“ Emmerich turned, and Ezra was already looking at him, face pale and young in the moonlight and terribly vulnerable. “Don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Ezra said, tight-mouthed. “I only want— _I_ don’t regret it. But if you do, I can forget that it ever came to pass.”

“It isn’t anything like that,” Emmerich said.

“Wasn’t I any good then? Is it—“

“Ezra, stop. It’s not you. It’s this. All of this, and what we’re trying to do. None of it’s safe, but _this_ —“

“Oh, _shut up_ , Emery,” Ezra said, suddenly heated. “Now I _see_. You’re just a coward.”

“ _Wie kannst du—_ ” Emmerich began, but Ezra went on speaking over him.

“I know what this is and I know what it means and I know how dangerous it is, I’m not a fool. But we know how to be careful and we know how not to get caught and why would this be any different? This may even be _less_ dangerous than what we’ve already been doing, and you’re still afraid?”

Emmerich only said, “I’m trying to protect you.”

“Don’t bother yourself,” Ezra said fiercely, now breathing so heavily that the glass panes of the window were fogging. “I don’t need it.”

“Ezra.”

“No, I don’t want to hear any more of your reasons.”

Ezra turned back to face the window, hands braced on the frame and shoulders hunched, his face creased and downturned and looking like Emmerich had just broken his heart. And maybe he had. He was only just coming to understand that Ezra was truly sincere about this, had desired this, and not only the very agreeable physical part, but perhaps wanted everything else just as much as Emmerich did. It was something startling to realize; that for the first time there was something mutual between himself and another man, something meaningful. Something to keep, exactly what he had sought for so long.

Emmerich put a hand to the back of Ezra’s neck then, turned him, caught his bare hip with his other hand. The boy’s skin was warm, his bones sharp beneath it.

“ _Ich bin ein Feigling nicht,_ ” Emmerich said, low and steady.

Ezra’s eyes glittered in the moonlight. “Prove it.”

So Emmerich gripped Ezra’s hips and hoisted him up into the narrow ledge of the round window, shoving him back against the glass. Ezra gasped and clamped his knees on either side of Emmerich’s ribs, his hands catching at Emmerich’s shoulders and chest. Emmerich pressed forward, prying Ezra’s legs apart, and then leant back. Hesitating.

“Are you—“

“ _Yes,_ ” Ezra snarled at him, so Emmerich lunged in and kissed him fiercely. Ezra’s skull smacked against the glass and Emmerich slid a hand up to cradle him, cupping the back of his head in his palm. Ezra whined and gasped and dragged at Emmerich’s hair with his fngers, tongue curling into his mouth and his ankles hooking behind Emmerich’s back, arcing forward with keen impatience. They were both ready and eager against each other, nothing between them now in their nakedness.

Emmerich took them both in hand and stroked them together, working his other hand deeper between Ezra’s legs until the man was flexed and writhing against him, bare skin squeaking against the window glass. The sounds Ezra made were nothing so much like words any longer, just artless babbling, sometimes wrapped around moaned versions of Emmerich’s name. When he spent himself, it was with such a sharp cry that Emmerich feared he had hurt him, until Ezra laughed breathlessly and moved his own hand between them, to close around Emmerich in turn until he too was brought to release.

Ezra dropped his face against Emmerich’s shoulder then, flushed and damp and heaving, and Emmerich touched a hand to his hair and stroked the back of his neck. Ezra made a keening noise and pressed forward, trembling with exertion. Emmerich rubbed the back of his shoulders until both of their breathing had evened out again, until perspiration had cooled against their skin.

Feeling strange and unsure, Emmerich let Ezra slide down from the window ledge, moving a step back as he did. But Ezra moved with him, tucking his hands around Emmerich’s waist and keeping himself close against him. Emmerich’s arms went around Ezra’s shoulders because it was the only thing he could really do, and then they stood there together, quietly, embracing in the dim light.

“Don’t protect me from what I want,” said Ezra, eventually.

Emmerich closed his eyes. “ _Es tut m—“_

“Don’t even say that, Emery. Stop apologizing, stop running, stop all this thinking that you do. Just take this as it is. It’s quite easy, really.”

“ _Du,_ ” said Emmerich, pressing a kiss to the top of Ezra’s head, “ _bist nicht einfache.”_

Ezra laughed and nipped at Emmerich’s chin. Emmerich shoved him away, chuckling, and marveled at how easy it did seem to be in this moment. Especially as Ezra caught his hand, pulled it against the side of his face and held it there, his eyes going softer. But, there was still one last thing Emmerich needed to know.

“What was it that Lilin wanted of you, then,” he asked, had to ask, and Ezra sighed.

“Emery—“

“It matters. _Bitte._ ”

“Only to show me his work,” Ezra said. “Drawings, and inking—it’s all quite fine. He learnt abroad, I think, to put inks to people’s skin. It’s not something he can do much of here, but he thought I might appreciate seeing his talent. And he is quite good, and was pleased to be complimented.”

“Is that all?”

Ezra kissed him gently. “ _Das war’s.”_

“ _Danke._ I only needed to hear it.”

Ezra smiled, and kissed him lightly once more. “Let’s go back to bed,” he said.

“Again?” said Emmerich, and Ezra laughed.

“To do what’s also done in a bed,” he said, tugging Emmerich gently towards their shared mattress. “Sleep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations: 
> 
> _Halt die Klappe._ = Shut up.  
>  _Danke. Auf dem Tisch, bitte._ = Thanks. On the table, please.  
>  _Ich tat nicht._ = I did not.  
>  _Ja, was?_ = Yes, what?  
>  _Was ist los? Ich bin beschäftigt!_ = What is it? I’m busy!  
>  _Was meinst du?_ = What do you mean?  
>  _Jetzt._ = Now.  
>  _Ich bin froh, das zu hören._ = I’m glad to hear it.  
>  _Ich weiß nicht._ = I don’t know.  
>  _Wie kannst du—_ = How can you—  
>  _Ich bin ein Feigling nicht._ = I’m not a coward.  
>  _Du bist nicht einfache._ = You are not easy.  
>  _Das war’s._ = That’s all.


	7. The Hanged Man

Ezra was gone when Emmerich awoke later on, and the sun had not yet risen.

But that was all right, Emmerich thought, as he lit a fire in the makeshift hearth and heated water over it, enough to scrub the remnants of the night from his skin. Ezra always awakened early as well and could have just gone elsewhere in the printing house, though Emmerich was not shy with his disappointment about his absence. They had woken together in the same bed nearly every morning since meeting, and now that they were lovers it had been strange to find only cool bedding and dim grey light in Ezra’s usual place beside him.

Emmerich dressed himself with no real haste, considered his holster for a moment before forgoing it, tucking the bulldog into the back of his trousers instead in the way that was Ezra’s preferred manner. He was most eager to find Ezra, to speak with him. Just to be certain that what they had come to understand together last night still stood now, in the hours of daylight. He was familiar with men whose minds and conduct changed with the rising of the sun, and though he did believe Ezra was different than that, Emmerich still wished to hear it once again.

He left through Luca’s room—also empty, the man’s small bed rumpled and unmade—and took the main stairs down to the printing floor. He spotted no one about. The presses were unattended and sitting in silence, as it was too early even for work hours. And Ezra’s pistol was on the floor beneath one of the drafting tables, the silver edge gleaming bright in a square of greasy light from a gaslamp outside.

Emmerich froze at seeing it. The Lutreole never left Ezra’s possession or sight, just as the bulldog never left his own. True enough, Ezra could have simply ducked into the washroom or Luca’s office for a moment, but even then it was unlikely he would have left the pistol sitting out like this on the ground. The sight of it there, lonely in the yellow light, sank something terrible in Emmerich’s stomach. Everything about it struck him wrong, and brushed a deep chill through him.

He went to a knee and retrieved the gun, spun the chamber out and looked inside—all were full, as he had expected. Emmerich was sure he would have heard a fired shot even up in the attic room. The pistol itself did not smell of powder, either. That meant that Ezra had left it here willingly, or had been set upon so quickly he hadn’t had time to take it, or had even left it behind on purpose as some kind of sign.

If anything had happened to him at all; if there was even something to be concerned about. There was still the possibility he was just in another room, and that Emmerich’s panic was foolhardy. Either way, Emmerich was beginning to understand why Ezra had struck him in the face when he had returned from that night with Archie at the slipways, why he had been so wrought with worry and panic. The same feeling was beginning to creep up upon Emmerich now, though he fought to keep it back. There was no reason yet to fear the worst.

But then, he saw the reason. At the edge of the table, along the sharp edge of the corner. A dash of red, just beginning to thicken and brown. Emmerich dropped to a knee to look, heart thick inside his chest, beating at a sickening pace. On the floor beside the table leg were several drying spots of dark blood, one with half a handprint smudged through it.

“Ezra,” Emmerich breathed, touching his hand to the liquid. His fingers came away tacky and reddened, and he hurriedly wiped it away on his trousers. Even as he did so, his eyes tracked across the floorboards and found more spots, a trail of them leading away across the printing house. Several were smeared with the track of a bootprint.

_“Nein, nein, unmöglich...”_

He heard the words again and again but did not recognize them as his own voice, not until the entire workspace was ringing with them and his throat burned raw. He staggered back against one of the presses, the metal edge of the table digging hard against his back, shoving the bulldog hard into his spine. His eyes tracked wildly across the floor, following the blood which continued along the wooden boardsl, droplets and smears where a boot or something else had smeared through it. He pushed away from the press and followed the trail to the side of the print house, where the narrow wooden stairs led to the door at the bottom and out into the street. The entrance he and Ezra had lock-picked their way through upon first coming here. It had not been closed all the way, the door sitting slightly off in its frame, as though it had been passed through in a hurry. The smell of the sewers and factories wafted in around the door frame.

Emmerich found himself sitting heavily upon the top step, his hands pressed to his mouth and his gut writhing. He could not imagine Ezra dead—he _wouldn’t_ , for it was too horrible to consider—and decided instead that he must have been incapacitated in some way, wounded, and dragged away. 

_“Beruhig dich, Emmerich, und denk nach,”_ he muttered into his fingers. Clearly it was the work of Staard and Clavel, and the men that now worked under them. There were no others who would want this. Where would they have gone from here? Where would they take Ezra? He and Emmerich had been unable to find any place that appeared to be a base of conducting their affairs, so Emmerich rather knew for certain where they would _not_ go. Unless dragging Ezra to one of the emptied storehouses or lofts was in fact what they had planned. He simply had to _find_ them, if there was only some way of…tracking them, of…

Emmerich’s eye fell on the smears of blood once again, from the drafting table all the way across the printing room floor and towards this small door that lead out to the alley. As a boy, his uncle Heinrich had taken him into the forests surrounding their village on occasion, to go hunting. Emmerich had never been fond of it, the hours of waiting and watching, sometimes with nothing to show for it but aching back and legs from crouching in the underbrush. Then, the drying blood of an animal on his hands at the end of it all, the small skinned corpses of rabbits and various fowl that Heinrich would carry back proudly. Emmerich could not deny that he enjoyed _eating_ the animals, but he wished he had not had to see their deaths, not plan them so carefully and so cruelly.

But he remembered how his uncle had read signs of the animals passing, the way tracks in the dirt and disturbances in the brush could lead him to prey. Or when one had already been wounded, the way to follow the trail of its blood to the hiding place it had dragged itself to in desperation, and how to set upon it in an ambush.

Emmerich had a trail to follow here, and the men at the end of it surely deserved an animal’s death. If they had killed Ezra, even _hurt_ Ezra—

He found himself back in their upstairs room without the memory of going there, pulling on boots and his coat and buckling his holster back on beneath it, moving with a wild yet purposeful energy. Only one thing mattered, and he had to act fast upon the one chance he had.

 _“Du bist nicht tot, Ezra,”_ Emmerich muttered, shoving an Acllaum pistol and their accompanying bullets in each of his coat pockets, the Lutreole into his holster. The bulldog he kept within his hand. _“Du kannst nicht tot sein. Warte auf mich.”_

Upon his leaving through the alley door, he found Luca outside in the gutter, likely laid out with a blow by whoever had come for Ezra. Perhaps he had intercepted the men at the door, and simply been put out of the way for convenience. Luca himself was aware and in his senses, but woozy and rather confused, sopping with mud and other unsavory runoff. Emmerich helped him to his feet and checked him over, finding a sizable lump at the back of his skull

 _“Io sto bene,”_ Luca muttered, clearly robbed of the knowledge that Emmerich did not speak his language. Emmerich half-slung the man across his shoulders, brought him back inside and to his office. Taking him upstairs to his bed would be preferable, but Emmerich had not the time for that. The longer he waited, the harder the trail would be to follow.

“I have to go get Ezra,” he told Luca, as the man collapsed into the chair at his desk, hand cupped to the back of his head. “You ought to stay put, here.” 

“Emmerich,” said Luca, reaching out an ungainly hand to grasp at Emmerich’s coattail. “I did not do this.”

It hardly mattered at the moment, if Luca had sold them out or not, so Emmerich only nodded and made to leave the office. Yet Luca had not unhanded his coat. 

“Emmerich, you mustn’t—I believe it would not be in your best interest to go after him.”

“What care do you have for my best interests?” said Emmerich in pure curiosity. Luca had never been overtly friendly nor fully indifferent to him—they were not friends, only associates, linked through Ezra. They both cared for him and thus tolerated each other. And Emmerich had never quite forgiven him for their first meeting.

Luca touched the back of his head once more, and winced. “When they came for him, at first they fought and wounded him, but I heard some of what they said near the door. The things that boy said about you…” For a moment Luca went unsteady, his head reeling on his shoulders as though it had become too heavy for him, and then he steadied himself with a hand to his temple. The usual color of his skin was overtaken by a grey pallor, and if Emmerich weren’t in a hurry he would have called someone in to have a look at him. Luca would just have to do so on his own.

“It doesn’t matter what he said.” Emmerich pulled his coat from Luca’s grip, made to leave the office.

“It would if you had heard it.” There was a grim tone to Luca’s voice that Emmerich did not like. “He told them he had got all the use he could from you. That you were witless and soft-headed, a near useless burden only good for using for while. That he was tired of you, how you leant on him for everything. Once he told them this, he went with them willingly.”

Bile rose in Emmerich’s throat, but he could not believe the words. He simply could not. “He must have had good reason.”

Luca’s expression told him that he truly _was_ lacking wits, but Emmerich was nothing if not stubborn. If Ezra had spoken about him that way…there was a reason. The man Emmerich had been with last night would not have said these things, would not even think them. Ezra kept his sentiments all near the surface of himself, whether it was anger or affection, cruelty or caring. If he felt such disgust and vitriol towards Emmerich, his body would have betrayed it or his passions would have. And Emmerich did not believe Ezra was that skilled in deception, or had been playing a long game since the moment they met.

Luca may have heard truly, but those words had not come from a true place. Emmerich was sure of it.

“Emmerich—” Luca called out once more as Emmerich left the office. But this time Emmerich disregarded him, and quit the print house entirely through the alley door.

The street outside was sunk in a thick yellowish fog, which curled together with a colder mist that seeped inland from the river. It bit into his skin through his coat, filled his nose and mouth with a briny taste. The gaslamps were still lit and no true light penetrated the hazy shroud. He was not sure of the time, but he only hoped it was still as early as it seemed, and that there were few people on the street to disturb the trail of blood he needed to follow.

There was quite a lot of it at first, large splashes that were already drying tacky and brown against the dirty street, yet still easily seen. Because the men had come for Ezra at such an early hour, they had obviously not worried about being spotted and the trail stuck to the wider streets and eventually the main thoroughfare that lead out of the factory district entirely. Emmerich hardly noticed when he passed from the squat drab industrial buildings into Bowbuttle and eventually to the outskirts of Grand Faire, so focused was he on his one scant chance of finding Ezra. The trail grew harder to see at every step, becoming no more than a few droplets here and there that were only minutely darker than the muck of the street, ones that Emmerich was not even sure if he was simply imagining out of pure hope.

And at last, the truth was inescapable.

The trail was gone.

Emmerich dropped to his knees in the center of the street, chilled to his bones with an emptying sense of horror. 

“Ezra.” His voice came hoarse and broken to his lips. _“Ezra.”_

He lifted his head, stared into the lane ahead. But before him there was only the fog-shrouded street, the cobblestones curving away into the yellowish haze. The lofty spires of a nearby abbey made striking black shapes that seemed to shift and change within the cloying mist. The soft glow of a lamp bloomed somewhere at the foot of it. As Emmerich looked, it went out. Then, down the road, another winked away. Then yet another. The lamplighters were about, snuffing the flat-flames.

Emmerich struggled to right himself. “No,” he whispered. He could not simply stop here. Ezra might or might not still be alive, but he _certainly_ would not be if Emmerich gave up.

He went back to the last visible spot of blood, no more than a few brown flecks on the stones. There was a cross street here, but no sign that either the left or right street had been taken. Continuing forward then was the best option, though Emmerich was loathe to leave the last visible sign of Ezra’s presence. Nevertheless he moved forward, scouring the ground for any sign of what he knew wasn’t there, but now also glancing around at the nearby buildings, in the case that any of them appeared that they might house a crew of outlaws. But he was in Grand Faire, and these were all respectable businesses, closed in the early hour but certainly with no sign of being used for any nefarious purpose. It seemed an odd area of the city for men such as these to even be passing through.

With every step his hope dwindled, crumbling around his heart. But then, quite suddenly, a new splash of blood puddled across the cobblestones. Brighter and far newer than the dwindling trail he had followed before. When Emmerich stooped to touch it, his fingers came away slick and red. Fear clutched in around his heart—it was not a _lot_ of blood, but clearly something had happened, a scuffle perhaps, that had wounded someone. Most likely Ezra. But until now Ezra had clearly been going obediently along with them, and now only a block or so away from where his blood ended….

Had he done it on purpose? Seen the end of his followable trail, provoked the men who had taken him...in hopes that Emmerich, or anyone, _was_ following? 

Emmerich looked up, finding himself at the meeting of another cross-street. He was down a narrower lane now, not a main thoroughfare but certainly not a tucked away alley. It would be wide enough for carriages to pass, and indeed Emmerich could see some cart tracks pressed into the dirt of the cobbles.

There was one building that did not match the appearance of the others around it. The front doorway was a large arch—big enough to fit a horse-drawn cart into which ice would be loaded from the wells—the door wooden, painted a faded and peeling blue, barred with a chain. The windows were grimy, covered up on the insides with brown paper. It did not look shut up simply overnight, but disused entirely. The building itself was solid brick all the way up, joined near seamlessly with the others beside it. A single bootprint, still glistening from the muck of the street, stood out boldly on the cobbles before the doors.

The cobbles, which cut through the pavement and led inwards and under the door, as though the street continued into the building itself. The arch of the door was large enough for a horse and carriage to fit comfortably through. With no doubt of it, Emmerich knew that behind this row of buildings would be a canal, likely some sort of basin, into which barges could dock and unload wares. This building in particular would have the ground floor set below the water level. He knew these buildings, knew their type well.

 _“Ein Eiskeller,”_ Emmerich murmured. Emmerich had seen his share of ice houses in the days when he had picked up work unloading barges as well as loading them at the close, and ice was a constant trade. The wells to hold it were dug deep and could potentially hide all manner of things, if used for that purpose. Could be covered if inspected, its contents unsuspected. An excellent use for those who were smugglers and thieves looking to hide wares. Or, perhaps, a captured man.

He clearly could not simply walk in—not only was the door barred, but if there were truly any of Clavel or Staard’s men here, they would be on lookout. And Emmerich was not familiar enough with this area of the city to know the best and quickest way to access the canal, and the back of the buildings, from here. There may have been an alleyway nearby, or there may have been nothing for blocks.

 _Well,_ Emmerich told himself. _It isn’t as though you haven’t had practice with climbing in recent days_. The windows on each floor were rather spaced apart and the bricks were set evenly and smooth, unlike the rough sloppy masonry of the poorer areas that he had been previously climbing. But he set to it, first adjusting his holster so that it hung at the back of his waist and would not hinder him. Though still had all the other guns in his coat pockets, which weighted him down considerably.

Despite the narrow ledges of the windows and a general absence of foot and handholds, Emmerich managed to get himself hoisted to the first story in short enough time. The window he first encountered there fortuitously pushed upwards with some effort, and with minimal sound. Emmerich rolled himself over the sill and landed in a quiet crouch on the bare boards of the floor within. The room was a single large one, the only thing within being rows of slatted wood at the far end, forming several open-ended compartments.

Horse stalls. All empty save for a faint, nostalgic scent of animal that seemed to emanate from the wood itself. A thin layer of dust coated the floor, and everything was silence. Emmerich held his breath, pricking his ears and trying to listen over the heavy thudding of his heart. He brushed his hand over the grip of the Lutreole, as though he could sense Ezra’s presence through it. But there was nothing. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps there was nothing here, perhaps—

But a low mumble of voices reached his ears, coming from the floor below. It died away as quick as it had come, but Emmerich was sure he had heard it. Against the north wall of the building was set the ramp that the horses would have been led up to the stables from the carriage entrance downstairs. Emmerich crept towards it, carefully testing each floorboard before setting his whole weight upon it in case any were loose and squeaky. None were. He crept down the ramp, stopping when he was still hidden from view by the floorboards, but able to see through the support beams into the large room below.

It was indeed set below the water line, though a platform at the back led up to the back wall, greasy windows and heavy doors that would go out to the docking basin. Through cleaner parts of the windows, Emmerich could see the heavy brownish surface of the water lapping up against the bricks of the buildings across the basin. Two enormous wells were dug just before the platform, each rimmed with a ring of brick and leading down into darkness. The ice wells themselves.

And there were men here, men who were not working and did not look like laborers of any sort; standing ‘round armed and alert. Placed near doors and windows, Emmerich noted, and all of them the rough sort of men he would expect of what remained of Kegg’s group, and Allister’s as well. They would now be men under Clavel and Staard. Though Emmerich was decently acquainted with Clavel’s broken-nosed profile and lanky build, he had seen Staard only once before, in the brothel the night he and Ezra had first met—a stocky red-haired fellow with a gruff smoke-roughened voice. 

Emmerich could not identify any of these men as ones he knew from Allister’s crew; in fact, none of them looked familiar. These, then, were Staard’s men alone. They did have the most reason to take Ezra—after all, he had worked with them, been their cohort for three years. He was trying to take stock of their positions, count as many heads as he could see, when a cacophony of sounds suddenly broke into the relative silence. It was nothing more than a hollow series of incoherent noises, rebounding up from the wide ring of stone that made up the lip of the ice well, but Emmerich’s heart leapt and then clenched in his chest.

“Ah, he’s woke,” said one of the men nearest the well, and leant over the rim to peer into the darkness below. “Oi, Ezza! How’s it feel down there?”

The answer was a ringing echo of angry shouts that Emmerich could not pull any true words from, but it sounded enough like Ezra’s voice that his knees went weak with relief. 

_Nicht tot_. He put a hand against the rail of the ramp to steady himself. _Not dead._

But likely wounded, and Emmerich knew how deep these ice wells could be. There would be no way to get Ezra out on his own, not with all these men here and Ezra injured and stored neatly underground in the middle of them.

But what were they waiting for? Taking him from the print house and dragging him this far through the city—killing him seemed far easier. But they seemed rather unconcerned with him entirely. At Ezra’s clamors, the men closest to the well had chuckled roughly but, no one else shouted down to him. None of them moved from their spots around the large chilly room. Luca had said Ezra had gone willingly with them. Perhaps he had promised them something, an assurance that would ensure his survival—like the return of the money? Emmerich would _gladly_ return it, if that’s what the men were so concerned with retrieving. They had not used a penny of it, and the satchels holding it were still stashed between the walls of the room Luca was allowing them, untouched. If it would give them their lives, then Emmerich especially had no want to keep it.

He stayed crouched on the rampway until his legs began to go numb beneath him and his grip on the wood began to slip. It seemed as though if he stayed here, watching, then no harm would befall Ezra. But if he left…he could neither see nor stop anything that happened here.

And yet these men were doing nothing at all. Only one or two of them had moved this entire time, and it was only to look out of a different part of a window or to shift to a new position. Most were at the platform in the back where the largest windows were, or near the ice wells, and only one man was near the front of the ice house at all. Brown paper covered these windows and the door was barred by the chain, so it was likely of less concern to them. Emmerich was only glad they had not see his shadow or heard him as he had been clawing himself up the outside of those windows. One man was near the bottom of the ramp, but with his back to it and with no chance of spotting Emmerich unless he did some extreme contorting.

“My god man, how long’ve we got to wait here?” one of the men by the windows barked, so suddenly that Emmerich startled and nearly lost his balance. He caught himself on the ramp, felt the board creak softly under his hand, and his breath and heart and mind all seemed to stop completely.

But the sound wasn’t heard, because several more men had all shouted back at once. The one Emmerich heard the best was the man nearest to the ramp, who bellowed, “you had us go fetch the bloody little mandrake far too early! We wasn’t meetin’ the rest this early, it’s barely past dawn, you nickey twat!”

Emmerich could only take this to mean that Staard, as well as Clavel and his men, were on the way here. That would at least double the amount of armed bodies here, and Emmerich could not take on the five that were already here. Ezra was out of reach, and Emmerich could not keep sitting here idly, just _waiting_.

So he crept back across the floor to the window, slithered out and dropped himself carefully back to the ground. Once there, he remained crouched on the cobbles for a moment, taking in his breaths short and carefully. His earlier panic had abated, but now there was a tight desperation that would drive every action he took from here. Ezra was not yet dead, but he could be soon, or worse. Clavel’s men were not particularly a gentle breed, and Emmerich knew nothing of Staard’s, but they could hardly be better. There were worse things than death that could happen to a person, and from his time spent around Ezra and those that knew him, he thought that there were some who might leap at an opportunity to cause grievous harm to him.

There was only one place in the city that he thought he could turn to, the only people who might understand. Certainly the only chance he had.

# 

The slums on the south side of the river had barely woken by the time Emmerich had crossed Moxmill bridge and wound his way through the the constant reek of rot and sewage all around the run-down shanties, the streets and flimsy roofs covered in soot that drifted down from the factories. He slogged through Peddleweight and into the slightly less shambled St Falgars district. The sun may have risen by now, but it was hidden beneath a low angry tumble of clouds that pressed down on the city, smothering its inhabitants.

There weren’t even any of the women about the Thistledown performing its disguise as a laundry when Emmerich got there, and the front doors were shut and locked. Emmerich knocked, then waited upon the stoop with his hands in his coat pockets, curled around the handles of the Acllaum pistols and avoiding the gaze of a man who sat upon a burlap bundle on the opposite side of the street, smoking and staring and clearly waiting for the place to truly open its doors.

It was long minutes, and more persistent knocking, before anyone came to the door. And it was Miss Ingsbel herself, her dark eyes glittering at him out of the shadows and pale fingers wrapped around the warped wood of the door.

“Ah. Mister Mandelbrauss,” said she, and to Emmerich’s surprise, yawned. Compared to their last meeting, it was a moment of unexpected casualty. “There are better hours in which to assure yourself of your friend’s well-being here—”

“It’s not anything like that,” Emmerich interrupted, despite the rudeness of it. “Ezra has been...taken.”

Miss Insbel stared at him for one moment more, then moved from the door and allowed him inside. The parlor area was dim, the only lights that were lit clearly the ones Miss Ingsbel had turned on as she came down the stairs. From around the corner of the upstairs wall, he could see several curious heads peeping around the corner, awoken by the noise and watching them. 

Miss Ingsbel closed the door behind them and threw the bolt back into place. Emmerich had been prepared to see her in some sort of nightdress, and to avert his eyes politely as necessary. But she was fully dressed, though her hair was damp and loose.

“Taken by whom,” she said, quite calmly.

“The men that he—that I—that we both worked for, before all this.” Emmerich was unsure of how much she knew of their situation, of how much Vena would have told her, if she had told her anything at all. Ezra and Vena were alike to brother and sister as anything, and doubtless Vena spoke of him to the other girls. But to her employer? “I...I am afraid they will kill him.”

“And you have come here.” Miss Ingsbel crossed her arms lightly, resting her fingers atop her elbows. “Expecting what?”

“I—there was no one else.” He was horrified to find himself near to weeping. “I cannot get him back on my own. I need, I only need—” The folly of this idea was becoming clearer as he spoke. Miss Ingsbel had once threatened him with a pistol, and told him that her girls knew how to take care of themselves, but how could he ask this of them? And yet he kept speaking, and found himself holding one of the Acllaum pistols in his hand with the barrel pointed to the worn rug. “I can arm you. Please. I can’t do it alone.” The two satchels of money, stuffed into the walls of Luca’s printhouse, occurred to him. “I can compensate you, whatever you want. _Bitte, ich brauche ihn. Er ist alles.”_

“Don’t make the poor man beg,” said a terribly familiar voice, and Emmerich turned to see Lilin Aubrey descending the stairs, dressed as always in trousers that were too tight and a shirt that was too loose. He was smiling, but it did not reach his eyes. He seemed to be focused on the one thing that was not there, staring into the empty space at Emmerich’s side which should have held Ezra. “What’s the trouble?”

At his side, Miss Ingsbel snorted. “What isn’t the trouble,” she said. “Ezra appears to do nothing but infuse it into the very air around him.”

Lilin’s countenance changed at once; sobering further, even the smile wasting away. “What’s happened?”

Emmerich could feel no jealousy towards him any longer, and now welcomed his immediate concern. Vena cared for Ezra, but Emmerich had nearly forgotten that Lilin might as well. With Miss Ingsbel hesitant, perhaps Lilin would help change her mind. He explained, quickly, the same story he had told her, though perhaps with less desperation and more clarity. As the last words left his mouth, a hand brushed his shoulder, turned him ‘round.

“Emmerich, this is not our fight,” Miss Ingsbel said to him, her hand now in a firm grasp upon his coat. “I’m sorry, truly, about Ezra. I understand he is dear to you and Adia—” Emmerich vaguely recalled that was the name Vena went by here, “—but I cannot and will not risk my girls over a single man. I have taught them to defend themselves, not to go roaming about gunning down brigands.”

“I understand,” Emmerich said, for he did. His voice was weak to his own ears, and distantly he felt Lilin take him by the elbow and try and lead him towards one of the threadbare settees. “Staard will kill him,” he said, unsure if he was addressing Lilin or no one at all. “I—Lilin, no, leave go, I have to go back myself.”

“Staard?” Behind him, Miss Ingsbel’s soft voice became a knife blade, sharp and dangerous. “ _Johan_ Staard.”

“Yes,” Emmerich said, lifting his head. Ezra had said the man’s given name once and he was sure, almost completely, that it was Johan. “You know of him.”

“Oh. He has been here, once or twice.” The ugliness in her voice had not abated, and it send an odd twist of hope through him. He thought he had angered her once before, when she had drawn on him, but it was nothing compared to how she looked now.“He lays hands on the girls, as do his men. He would be barred from these premises if such a thing were possible. As is, we cannot keep him out. We cannot fight back. You clearly know the kind of men he has behind him, what they would do if challenged.” Miss Ingsbel eyed Emmerich sharply. “These are the same men who have taken Ezra.”

Emmerich nodded, not yet daring to be too encouraged. “Yes.”

Miss Ingsbel then glanced upwards, over Emmerich’s head. When he turned, he found a full cluster of women now standing on the center landing of the stairs, most in nightdresses, watching this display somberly. He was not startled to see Vena included among them. He was even less surprised when she shoved her way down the stairs, and stood herself near face-to-face with Miss Insgsbel. They were nearly of a height, similar dark hair and eyes, and could have almost been sisters.

“I’m going with him,” Vena said, simple and firm, and then moved to Emmerich’s side. Lilin was still there as well, and he touched Vena’s shoulder in a comforting fashion. Several of the other women on the stairs had moved down a step or two, and all had their eyes upon the three of them. Miss Ingsbel was watching them in turn.

“Who would go, of their own will?” she said, and several women put up their hands almost at once. Many of the others looked as though they wanted to, but were held back by something. Fear of these men perhaps, or even physically by each other—he saw one girl snatch another’s hand down and pin it to her side, whispering furiously and shaking her head.

“Well, Mister Mandelbrauss,” said Miss Ingsbel, turning back to him. “I suppose you have your help, after all.”

“ _Da_ —thank you,” Emmerich said in little more than a whisper. Though he knew it was not for him, nor for Ezra, but he was grateful all the same. He did sit on the settee then, but only because he did not trust his own legs to hold him.

“Let’s not waste time about this, then.” Miss Ingsbel moved a single step towards the stairs, which was enough to scatter any of the women that had not volunteered. Most disappeared back upstairs, but the few who were dressed headed to the half of the building that housed the dolly tubs. Those who had put up their hands remained; there were three.

“Well, is this your preferred attire for this outing?” Miss Ingsbel said to them. At once they dispersed to dress and ready themselves, including Vena and Lilin, which left Emmerich and Miss Ingsbel alone in the parlor. Emmerich imagined her pistol was already on her; that she had answered the door with it readied. He watched as she deftly twisted her hair into a plait, and then came to him and uncurled his fingers from the Acllaum pistol, which he still gripped in his hand.

“I want no harm to come to them,” he said, quietly, as she examined the pistol. “I would not have come if I could do this alone.”

Miss Ingsbel slipped the gun somewhere beneath her skirts—he had offered it to her, after all—then bent to tighten and retie the laces of her worn boots. “I am aware, Mister Mandelbrauss.”

The wisest action would be to cease speaking. Yet he could not. “If you told me to go, I would go.”

Miss Ingsbel’s eyes flashed to him for only a moment. “It’s something of a pity about our inclinations, “she said briskly, hiking up her skirts to an astonishingly indecent height and checking a slim knife in a sheath that was strapped about her leg. “I am beginning to like you.”

He did not inquire as to how she knew of his nature. He imagined it was clear enough on his own face whenever Ezra was near him, whenever Ezra was even mentioned, his unsuppressed desperation now to have him back safe. As for hers, he did not want to assume, though the suggestion was that men did not interest her. But perhaps she simply misliked men with red hair.

“I am certain mine would encompass you, were I a different man,” Emmerich professed, and he did believe it was the truth. Miss Ingsbel tilted her dark eyes to him, a smirk on her lips.

“Another lifetime then, for both of us,” she said, her face composing into something much more serious and hard. “But in this one, there is other work to be done.”

#

Emmerich received quick introductions to the other women when they returned—a sturdy woman called Katharine with arms made muscular by working the possing-sticks, Franny tall and dark with her hair tied over in a kerchief, and Ruth who had grey at her temples and lines about her face but a great strength in the way she carried herself. Emmerich was sure Miss Ingsbel would not have included them if they were not fully capable of defending themselves. What surprised him was Imogen, the pale and freckled girl with the northern accent that Emmerich had last seen in tears. Her hair was tied back now into a sensible plait and she was dry-eyed and standing tall.

Emmerich glimpsed Lilin as he joined them all last from the stairs. He now wore a coat and boots which made his appearance far less wanton—he would have been taken for any young man of the working class, heading to a factory for a day’s worth of toiling. Even the yellow curls of his hair seemed less vibrant, slicked back and tamed. He seemed to sense Emmerich’s gaze on him, for he lifted his head and looked about until their eyes met.

“Thank you,” Emmerich said to him, in something of a mutter, moving closer as he did. “You don’t need be part of this, I know. I doubt Staard or his men ever touched you.”

“Well. I’m not doing it because of that, am I,” Lilin said, and Emmerich felt his countenance fall impassive and cold. He _knew_ he had no reason to be jealous of Lilin, and he wasn’t, and yet that protectiveness of Ezra that wanted to keep _anyone_ from him was still so strong. And potentially smothering, and dangerous, and he would have to be careful of his own self with it.

“You’ve no need to be jealous of me,” Lilin said then, as though following Emmerich’s obvious thoughts. “We’re only friends, Emmerich, and I don’t take my friends to bed.”

“I’m not,” Emmerich said. “I only don’t like you much.”

Lilin smirked then, an odd smile that pulled across half his face. “Fair enough,” he said. “But I _can_ help you, and I will.”

“Because of Ezra.”

“Yes, because I’m fond of him. I wouldn’t like to see him hurt any more than you would.” Lilin’s pale eyes studied Emmerich in a way he did not like. Perhaps Ezra had spoken to Lilin about Emmerich, shared with this boy what he wanted before Emmerich himself had even known. He wondered if Lilin _would_ have taken Ezra to bed otherwise. But none of it truly mattered now. Or ever would, if he could not get Ezra back alive.

“Here,” said Emmerich, and passed Lilin one of the Acllaum pistols, its weight still so fragile and delicate feeling in his hand. “You can shoot, I’d hope.”

At once Lilin snapped the gun in half just as Ezra had done upon first handling one of these same makes, looking over the odd fixed combination of barrel and cylinder, inspecting the empty chambers. “You don’t think I’d’ve been living under Miss Ingsbel’s roof for most of my life and not known how to handle one of these?” Lilin said, and clicked the cylinder neatly back into place. “I might even be a better shot than you.”

Emmerich did not dispute with him over the matter, and simply handed over the accompanying bullet cartridges. Lilin took them, allowing their hands to touch with purpose, though one that was not intimate.

“You’re a good man, Emmerich, you know,” he said. “Not many…” Lilin drew in a breath, a strangely somber expression on his face. “He is fortunate to have a friend like you.”

Of course Lilin would not know that their relationship had progressed beyond that, but Emmerich felt no need to educate him on the matter. It was a private thing, something meant for him and Ezra alone. But it was also the unexpectedly maudlin look upon the boy’s face, the sudden loneliness in the hunch of his shoulders that Emmerich recognized well, which stopped him from the correction his heart wanted to make.

But it was gone, in the next moment, when Lilin raised his head and his usual ingratiating smile had dropped back into its usual infuriating place. “Well,” he said. “Oughtn’t we be getting on with this?”

“Oh, _halt die Klappe,_ ” Emmerich muttered, and pushed past him to join the others waiting by the doors.

#

There were new bootprints around the carriageway door now, which meant that there were more men inside the ice house than had been before. Upon seeing them, Emmerich gathered the Thistledown women down to the far end of the street, mostly out of sight of the ice house. He had been thinking of a plan on the journey back across the river, at least the very outlines of one, and with the front of the building still entirely unguarded at the front, it seemed a possible one.

Lilin was a good shot, or so he had said. Katharine and Franny were grown women, sturdy and tall, while Vena, Ruth, and Imogen both much younger. For entering the ice house and making no noise, he found the latter to be a better choice.

“Katharine, Franny, and Lilin, you ought to be on the rooftops. Make sure you can see the door, but can hide if necessary. The others, with me,” he said, and then turned to Miss Ingsbel, who was watching him with something of a hard and unreadable expression. “I—my apologies, I did not mean to overstep—”

“Oh, no,” said Miss Ingsbel, with a lift of her dark eyebrows. “It’s rather nice to see you not trotting at someone’s heels like a puppy. I may know how to defend myself and my girls, but I’ll admit my ignorance to ambushes. Remember, however—” her smile gleamed then, bright in the overcast gloom, “I’m the best shot of them all.”

“Then, you’re with me,” Emmerich said, and Miss Ingsbel glided to his side with a knowing smirk. While also a grown woman, she was slight of frame and short in height, not much taller than Vena even. Though he would rather not have her scaling buildings, she would likely be up to the task.

He looked back to the other two women and Lilin, who seemed to be discussing the best rooftop spots amongst themselves, gesturing and pointing at chimneys and gables. 

“Anyone approaches, shoot them. Anyone leaving, shoot them,” Emmerich said to them, and Katharine and Franny exchanged a pleased look. Not at all what Emmerich had expected, but he could not begrudge them pleasure from being given a chance to strike back at men who had once hurt them. Lilin only smirked at him, and Emmerich turned away.

“We need them to believe there are more of us than there seem to be,” Emmerich went on, now addressing the others. “As there truly are more of _them_. The aim doesn’t matter, shoot both guns you have. Separately, to sound as more shots. The idea is to drive them outside, where the others can set upon them. All we truly need is this building to be empty, for none of them to return to it. Then I can go in, get Ezra.”

“You said windows in the back,” Miss Ingsbel said, placing hands upon her hips and looking back down the street with a critical eye. “Perhaps two of us come through the first story, two more around the back. With the other three in front, it has them surrounded on all possible sides.”

“The windows leave you too open, accessible,” Emmerich said. “I would not risk it.”  
“You have risked us already,” said Miss Ingsbel. “And if we are going to do such, we may as well make sure that it is not a fruitless endeavor.”

“I—” Emmerich began, and then, “would you take the windows, then?”

“Myself and Ruth,” said Miss Ingsbel promptly, as Emmerich handed her one of the Acllaum pistols. 

“I’ll need another,” Ruth put in. “Only got the one.”

Emmerich had left one of the Acllaums, his own, and Ezra’s. He handed Ruth the first of them, and after only a few moments of looking it over, she clearly understood the mechanism of the cylinder. Miss Ingsbel certainly had trained her girls to look after themselves, better than Emmerich had ever been trained. Given that he’d had no training whatsoever, it was not unexpected.

“Has everyone got two?”

Imogen put up her hand. “I haven’t.” 

Emmerich was loathe to give her the bulldog—not because it was his own, but because it was such a terrible example of weaponry. But she would not need to be hitting precise targets, so into her hands it went. Only the Lutreole was left now, tucked into the holster close to his side. He could forgo a weapon of his own, if needed, but...this was all he had of Ezra now. He wanted—needed—it nearby. And he saw Miss Ingsbel watching him, and realized he was clutching the grip of the pistol beneath his coat, and that she could see him doing so.

“Vena?” he said, and she shook her head.

“I’ve two,” she said, and Miss Insbel at once gave her a look. “What? One is yours, one I took from my father’s office ages ago and he hasn’t noticed yet.”

Emmerich laughed despite himself, and Ruth chuckled as well. “Right,” he said then. Down at this end of the street, he had spotted a narrow alley where the greenish brown of the canal water peeked through. They could likely get around to the area of the basin that way, and Emmerich gestured for Vena, Imogen, and Miss Ingsbel to follow him. The others remained, still talking amongst themselves about the roofs.

Emmerich and the women wound their way through the alley to the walk that lined the canal, and then back to the docking area that held the ice house. Emmerich could recognize it by the large windows and its placement against the other buildings. And it was there that they found what the front of the building had been missing: a man standing at the edge of the basin with a pistol in hand, keeping watch. Emmerich was just taking in a breath in order to speak, when Miss Ingsbel pushed past and strode around the corner. He did not have the time to catch her back.

The man noticed her at once—a lovely woman making her way down the edge of the basin towards him, now slow and almost timidly, though with a fluid movement to her hips that even Emmerich saw. She had made her way almost halfway to the man, who had stuck his pistol back in a holster by now, when she stepped too close to the very edge of the dock. Emmerich saw her wobble, loose her balance, but luckily tip herself in the direction of dry land. She fell to the ground, her skirts flopping up high on her legs to reveal pale calves. Miss Ingsbel cried out in such a manner that Emmerich knew all of this had been a purposeful thing. And at once the man left his spot before the windows, hurrying over towards her. Emmerich did not know whether his intent was chivalrous or nefarious, but it did not matter—as soon as he came within reach and bent down to her, Miss Ingsbel caught him round the neck, bore him down to the pavement and pressed her arm against this throat to cut off both his breath and his cries, all of her weight atop him.

She was small, but strong. In only a matter of moments the man ceased thrashing and fell still. Carefully, Miss Ingsbel rolled him off the edge of the dock, and into the flat water of the basin, keeping a tight hold on his clothes so he did not splash. He disappeared beneath the surface for a moment, then bobbed somewhat back into view, face-down and floating.

Miss Ingsbel was already climbing back to her feet, gesturing at the others to come forward while Emmerich was still recovering from the spectacle. 

“I—well done,” he said when he reached her, and at first she did nothing but send him one of her flint-eyed glances and straighten her skirts. But then;

“Be thankful you can never fall for something so piteously obvious as that,” she said. It seemed a compliment, yet Emmerich frowned.

“I wouldn’t leave a woman lying on the ground,” he said, and Miss Ingsbel snorted.

“Yes, helping me up was his true priority.” Then she was turning away from him, speaking a few quiet words to Ruth and resting her fingers on the crown of Vena’s tumultuous dark hair. Emmerich hesitated before joining them, once again thrown by Miss Ingsbel and what her true opinion of him actually was. Sometimes he thought she would actually prefer to shoot him than to hear him speak.

“Vena and Imogen and I will get upstairs. Fire only when you hear our shots first,” he said, addressing mainly Ruth and Miss Ingsbel. They would have to first shoot out panes in the windows, but those were grimy enough to perhaps help obscure their positions. They could also keep out of reach by ducking back behind the brick walls to either side. He produced the bullets that had come along with the Acllaum pistols. “Shoot often, but make them last. _Viel Glück._ ”

Miss Ingsbel and Ruth nodded at him, and then Emmerich turned towards the task of the climb. They would have to approach from the building next door, as walking in front or or climbing the ice house’s own windows was too risky. He went first, to test the way, and Vena and Imogen were surprisingly deft at clambering their way up after him to the first story, then sliding along the molding until they reached the windows on the first floor. Emmerich had some idea they might have had some experience prior to this; certainly Vena seemed the type who might have been a daring child fond of some mischief. 

The three of them crept quietly through the window that Emmerich pried open with some more effort than the first, and on his first step inside he nearly fell through a rotted hole in the floor beside the area where the horse stalls were. It was possible to see down to the floor below through the remaining crossbeams, a view mainly of the platform before the windows. Emmerich directed Vena and Imogen around it as they followed him inside, but gestured to Imogen and silently pointed her out the spot. They could not speak now that they were within, even over the mumbles of voices that came from below.

Imogen understood, and crouched at the rotted spot with her pistols in hand. She would be able to fire directly through the ceiling, and it was unlikely anyone would guess shots were coming from _there_. He touched Vena on the arm and gestured her to follow him towards the rampway, making sure that she kept behind him and that his body could shield her. He stopped at the same place he had before, and then edged forward when Vena elbowed and pushed at his back. He was far more exposed now, a large gap between the boards of the first story and the ramp, but there was a rough wooden railing and the area was dark, and if no one came too near or looked too close...

There were far more men than before, over double the previous number. At least twelve or fifteen of them, now filling the space in a much more threatening presence. Emmerich hadn’t expected so many, it seemed as though it was every man in both crews gathered here. He now recognized the men he had worked under for the past five and could pick out the ones he had known best—Thomme and Uxilord were generally the only ones who would ever converse with him, and they were standing in a corner together, and the man who generally gave him his meager stipend, Witherkey, was nearer the windows. While all armed, none of them men were particularly on alert or paying much attention to anything. It seemed as though they were only waiting for something to be decided, and quite bored in the meantime. 

Staard and Clavel themselves were both here now. They stood together near the ice well that held Ezra, speaking in rapid mutters to one another. Emmerich could only assume Ezra was still stowed below ground, as another careful sweep of the room did not reveal his presence. He wasted no time then, and after a glance back at Vena to assure that she too was ready, he drew the Lutreole from his holster. He took careful aim with the sleek barrel of Ezra’s unfamiliar pistol, and fired at the back of Staard’s head.

The shot went wild, as he had accounted for the heavy kick the bulldog gave and its tendency to track left. Ezra’s gun had no faults such as this, firing straight and true and missing both men entirely. But it was enough.

The next few minutes he would only ever remember as a chaotic nightmare of noise and confusion. Glass panes shattering as bullets crashed through them, men yelling, shots blasting out from within the room and from outside it, Vena firing her own weapon so near to his ear that his head was ringing with it. At first the men below scattered wildly, trying to run for cover that was not there, some firing back at the windows but most unable to tell where any shots were coming from. None were hit in any manner that incapacitated them, but that was not the intention to begin with. One man tried for the ramp, and froze upon seeing Emmerich and Vena crouched there. Vena thrust one arm across the back of Emmerich’s shoulders, fired, and the man’s neck spurted with a violent blossom of red. 

A slice of grey light cut into the dimness of the room, and Emmerich saw that one of the men had finally undone the lock on the door chain and shoved out into the street. He took two steps forward before his body jerked and stumbled forward, and he staggered out of sight beyond the doors. The work of Katharine, Franny, or Lilin. Another man had been quick on his heels, pushing the door further open and making it perhaps five or six long strides before he was out of sight. He did not know if a bullet reached him or not.

Emmerich himself refrained from taking too many shots—he would need to go down into that room himself eventually and did not want to be unarmed in the open. And were he not aware that only four people were firing directly into the room, he would have thought it was a dozen at least. More men were breaking away for the front doors, as the ones who had tried the doors that lead to the basin were now laid out upon the floor. They had gotten too close to either Ruth or Miss Insbel’s guns.

Some seemed to escape—whether they were purposefully allowed this or not was unclear. Some had collapsed outside in the street, the doors now flung wide open. But within a very short time, the entire room was emptied except for a few motionless bodies and the heavy metallic scent of blood. The silence became eerie as even the shots in the street quieted, and stopped.

Vena pushed lightly at Emmerich’s back. “Go,” he read upon her lips, and though he was sure she had spoken aloud, the ringing in his ears covered the sounds of it. 

And he went, making his way down the ramp, picking his way carefully over the body of the man Vena had shot. He was drenched in blood, his neck a ragged mess, collapsed face-first on the floor. Emmerich near held his breath as he stepped into the room, expecting at any moment for one of the prone bodies to leap to its feet, for a shot to ring out, a cry to raise up and catch him here. He could not look at the faces of any of the men as he passed. The quiet pressed in on him, and he could hear only the fading ringing in his own head.

But he reached the ice well with no difficulty, and risked enough to slide the Lutreole back into his holster. Then he laid his hands carefully on the brick, and leaned over the rim.

“Ezra,” he called down softly, his own voice spiraling down to the depths of the dark chute. He could make out only a faint shape at the bottom, and despite the lack of ice within, cold blasted up from the shadowy pit of bricks. But no other sounds with it. “Ezra. Ezra, please. _Antworte mir.”_

 _“Es...es geht mir gut,_ ” came the shaky reply at last, and Emmerich laughed for no reason he could understand. 

_“Ich bin froh, das zu hören,”_ he said though his helpless grin. “Let me get you out of there.”

“Please do.” Ezra’s voice was tinny and still very faint. Emmerich cast his gaze around the room for anything useful, a ladder or some sort of...anything. At last he spotted a lengthy coil of rope sat piled near the wall, a heavy rough twine that would serve well enough. Emmerich wrapped one end around a metal pole that appeared to be a hitching post, securing it before returning to the ice well.

“ _Achtung_ , Ezra,” Emmerich called gently, before throwing one end of the rope down. He heard a soft thud of it hitting a hard surface far below. “Grab on, I’ll pull you up.”

Ezra’s voice was alarmingly soft now. “I—I can’t.”

There was no time to argue on why Ezra couldn’t do so. “Tie it round your waist, then, come on, _mach was_ , Ezra!”

A moment passed, the rope sliding and jerking in small motions in Emmerich’s hands. Then, at last, “ _zieh.”_

Emmerich set his whole weight into it, bracing his foot against the rim of the well and hauling the rope around the metal post for leverage. He was only glad Ezra was slim and light, and that lifting him was not much more of a task than much of the labor he had done working at the close. Though when the top of Ezra’s dark head finally appeared over the bricks, Emmerich’s arms were beginning to ache with the strain. Ezra appeared to have tied the rope around his waist as Emmerich had bid, and twisted it around his back and chest beneath his arms, gripping it with one arm until his knuckles had turned yellow.

When he was far enough about the lip of the well, Emmerich reached out to him, keeping the rope firmly wrapped around his other arm and gripped in his hand. Ezra’s lips had taken on a faint blue tinge, and he shook terribly, hardly able to grasp his fingers around Emmerich’s. Emmerich abandoned his grip on the rope and caught Ezra’s lower arm as well, and hauled him to solid ground. 

“E-Em—” Ezra tried, but his teeth chattered together so terribly that he could not speak. Emmerich shed his coat at once and threw it about Ezra’s shoulders, drew him close. He could not help but to run his hand through the boy’s hair, caked with grit and blood, pull him nearer against his shoulder, murmur in his ear, “Ezra, oh, Ezra, _du bist in Sicherheit. Ich habe dich.”_

Ezra allowed the comforting and the petting, curling his head beneath Emmerich’s chin until his shuddering subsided. In the meanwhile Emmerich untwisted and untied the rope from around Ezra’s slight frame, let it fall in coils to the floor. When Ezra pushed hands against Emmerich’s waist, Emmerich allowed him the space to step back, and also took a true look at him since he was pulled him from the well.

Dried blood crusted beneath Ezra’s nose and along a wide gash along his forehead, just under the fall of his dark hair. The right arm of his shirt had been darkened and sodden by some liquid that was likely blood as well. Dirt and grime covered his skin and matted his hair, stained and dirtied his clothes, but his eyes were as sharp and bright as they had always been, pale blue-grey in the light from the windows.

“Ezra—” Emmerich began, in the moment before shots rang in the street outside. First several quick pops that Emmerich reckoned belonged to one of the Acllaum pistols, and answering heavy blasts that clearly came from a sturdier revolver. Ezra gasped and twisted himself closer at once, then seemed ashamed of the reaction; as he immediately tore himself from Emmerich’s embrace, eyes ablaze and lips drawn back. There was a split in his lip and his teeth appeared pinkish, as though he had perhaps been struck in the mouth and bleed there.

“Who is that firing?” he said, and before Emmerich could answer the inquiry, was already stalking towards the front doors of the ice house. He was not armed, and Emmerich’s coat flew from his shoulders and dropped to the floor. Emmerich, hurrying after him, scooped it up and pulled it back on. His hand brushed his holster as he did, touching the grip of an unfamiliar pistol.

“Ezra, _deine Pistole!_ ” Emmerich shouted at his back, drawing the Lutreole from his holster with the intent to return it to its rightful owner.

But Ezra was already through the carriageway doors and in the street, and the doors shut behind him.

“ _Bist du verrückt, du Arschloch?_ ” Emmerich bellowed after him, reaching the door only moments after Ezra had. Dashing into the street was foolhardy, yet he could not let Ezra remain out there alone. It occurred to him that he had not heard shots for several moments, but as soon as he placed his hand to the door, several more of them cracked through the air, muffled from behind the door. Further away this time, as though the men in the street and those from the Thistledown on the rooftops had moved into a different block of the city, perhaps one group corralling the other. Emmerich only hoped the girls were faring well, that he had not brought them to harm.

The moment Emmerich pushed into the damp cold air of the street, he had but a moment to see Ezra in the middle of it before a shape rose from the ground near his own feet, something that had looked like a motionless body when his eye had first passed over it. A man who had perhaps been shot, wounded, but not full incapacitated. His movements were quick and Emmerich, far too focused on his lover, was too slow to avoid his reach. 

Emmerich found himself whirled around, hurled headfirst towards the brick of the ice house wall. He managed to turn at the last moment, so that the side of his head struck the wall rather than his face, but the blow still staggered him, made his ears ring and his vision blacken at the edges and fade to grey. When he was recovered of his senses, the man had him enveloped in a stronghold, trapping his arms at his sides. He had dropped the Lutreole—his hand was lifeless and empty. Pain seared in his ribs and throbbed in his cheek and temple, and the tang of blood coated his tongue. And yet he was still able to see the shape that moved out of the shadows across the street, from a narrow alleyway where it had clearly been hiding.

Emmerich recognized the profile at once—the strong kink to the nose and the long bird-like limbs. Clavel, who had been cowering in a nearby alleyway but now saw an opportunity in Ezra, wandering uncertainly in the middle of the road. Clavel threw himself at Ezra from behind, caught him hard and slung him around. Ezra shrieked in fury for a moment before Clavel’s hand closed around his throat, choking him and snapping his head back to Clavel’s shoulder. Ezra’s hands flew up to claw at Clavel’s arm, his feet kicking at the man’s shins. But Clavel could lift Ezra nearly off the ground with his height and unexpected strength, and did so, keeping Ezra helpless and unable to free himself.

Emmerich shouted for him, roared out his name until the man behind him drove his fist into Emmerich’s stomach and expelled the breath from his body. He nearly went to his knees, and it was only the arms clamped about his middle that kept him up, gasping and blinking through stars in his vision.

Clavel swiveled towards Emmerich, eyes narrowing in the second it took to recognize who he was. Emmerich had worked under him, after all, though he’d been hardly of any import.  
“You want _this_ ,” Clavel shook Ezra roughly by the throat, and Emmerich whimpered in terror, “to live?” Ezra’s eyelids were fluttering, he looked near to unconsciousness, and it only became worse when Clavel produced a revolver from his coat and jammed it against Ezra’s jaw.

“Please.” The words could not be loud enough for Clavel to hear, but Emmerich had not the breath to say them louder. “Please. No.”

“He used you, you know,” Clavel snarled, and shook at Ezra again. “The money is all he was after from the start. He only needed some soft-hearted mark like you to drag into it, a pawn in his scheme. He’d’ve got rid of you as soon he was sure his hold on it was secure. Once any other threats were gone, like the men it truly belonged to.”

Emmerich could not speak still, nor had he any words to say if he could. It was plausible. Ezra had not wanted to spend any of the money. Did not want to hear of lending any to Luca, a friend of his who owed great debts. Ezra had been the one to suggest they remove Staard and Clavel from existence, eliminate them as a threat. He had agreed with Emmerich that leaving the Kingshore was not viable. Every plan had been Ezra’s, and Emmerich had followed them all.

“And look, it’s done.” Clavel briefly removed the gun from Ezra’s jaw to gesture at the street around them. “Who is left to pursue you now? The only threat left to him is _you_ , and he’ll rid himself of you the first moment he can. He’s nothing but an ill-bred cur to be put down. I’ll do you the favor.”

And Clavel pulled back the hammer on his revolver.

Ezra screamed, a wordless surge of rage that rang through the street, and turned on Clavel. At first it appeared as though he had merely thrown his weight at the man and knocked him down, twisting under the grip Clavel had on his throat and managing to shove a knee high into the man’s stomach. Weaponless as Ezra was, Emmerich could not imagine this going well. But he heard no shot go off, despite the pistol Clavel had been wielding. He saw only shadows scuffling in the street.

Emmerich twisted himself violently against the man at his own back, but the fellow outweighed him by at least a stone and had him at a terrible disadvantage. But he did need both arms to restrain Emmerich, and therefore couldn’t draw a weapon on him. But what Emmerich needed was to get to Ezra, and he could not free himself.

A single sharp blast of one of the Acllaum revolvers rang out from the rooftops. Something hot splashed the side of Emmerich’s head and neck, causing him to jerk away at once. The grip on him slackened immediately, and the man sagged against Emmerich’s back and crumpled to the street, red seeping out from beneath his contorted form. Emmerich turned, startled, up towards the rooftops, and saw a golden-haired head peeping back at him from behind the ice house’s sooty chimney.

“Good thing I heard all your screaming, came back around. What do you think of me now?” Lilin called to him, his grin bright even from the rooftop and through the smoke that wafted back from the barrel of his pistol. Emmerich was beginning to see why he and Ezra got on so well together; their similarities in countenance were rather strong. 

“I suppose you’re decent enough,” Emmerich said, and meant it sincerely. Cooling blood trickled down into the collar of his coat, slowly thickening and drying there.

“The rest are gone—we’ve run them off, the ones we’ve not shot. We’ll all be fine.” Lilin gestured with his pistol in a northerly direction, along the rooftops. “You ought to see to him.”

There was no question of whom he meant. Two shapes were now sat near the gutter, one stretched out on its back, unmoving, and the other huddled and bent over itself. Emmerich fumbled the Lutreole back into his holster and lurched to his feet, shaking the dead man’s hand from where it had snagged into his trouser leg with a small shudder of discomfort. All this death—he had never seen so much of it before as Allister’s errand boy. Not so violent and bloody like this. He had seen people slip into it like shadows into the dark, close and cold under the touch of his hand while he was helpless to stop it. And he still remembered the face of the man from the canal, the one whose eyes Emmerich had been staring into the moment he shot him through the head.

But none of that mattered now. As Emmerich got across the street, he could see that the figure stretched out in it was Clavel. He was alive, but pale in the face and glassy-eyed, groaning unintelligibly. It wasn’t until Emmerich saw the dark spreading stain on the man’s belly under his clutching fingers that he understood that Ezra was wearing the knife mechanism, and had wounded Clavel with it. The device Emmerich had built for him. How often had Ezra been wearing it, he wondered. He did not recall needing to remove the mechanization from Ezra during their intimacies of the previous night, but he remembered little from those hours but Ezra’s bared flesh, and not precisely what had been covering it. 

Ezra was on his knees not much of a distance away, coughing and holding his throat. New blood stained his shirtsleeves and neck, trickled out of his hair above his ear, marked his hands with crimson. Emmerich went to him at once, dropped to his knees before him, searching for any signs that any more of the blood was his just as cold flicks of rain began to pelt at the back of his neck .

“ _Was hat er dir angetan?_ ” he demanded, passing his hands over Ezra’s face and shoulders and sides. _“Bist du verletzt?”_

“No— _nein, nicht wirklich,_ ” Ezra muttered. “ _Aber du—“_

Emmerich shoved a hand into Ezra’s hair and dragged him forward. Ezra made a helpless sound in the moment before Emmerich kissed him hard, teeth and lips clashing together and fingers twisting hard against fabric and skin. Ezra clutched him back, opening fully to him, and it didn’t matter that they were in the street in the mud and the new-falling rain, kissing in full view of anyone who might happen to be there—a crime punishable by the noose if anyone cared to report them.

“Emery, I didn’t—“ Ezra tried, in between the rough presses of their mouths together, clawing at his coat with one hand. “What he said, I _didn’t—“_

“ _Ich weiß, ich weiß_ , I _know_.” Emmerich bit the words against Ezra’s mouth, tasting dirt and sweat and blood there. “ _Wir müssen gehen. Jetzt.”_

Ezra looked dazed as they staggered to their feet together, one shaking hand finding Emmerich’s waist and clinging on. Finger-shaped welts were already rising on his neck where Clavel had gripped him, and his face was pale and ashen.

“ _Komm mit,_ ” Emmerich said again, more gently, slipping an arm around Ezra’s shoulders to help hold him up. “ _Lehn dich auf mich.”_

“I can walk on my own,” Ezra said, but made no motion to shake Emmerich from him. He kept his other arm limp at his side, and he still looked ashen and rather unwell. Though he was holding to his feet, he was leaning into Emmerich heavily.

“ _Bist du sicher, dass du unverletzt bist—?_ ” Emmerich tried again, but Ezra only made a soft sound and shook his head. 

“I’m fine,” he said roughly, and after only the briefest glance at Clavel’s now-silent form, added, “let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [TRANSLATIONS]
> 
>  _“Nein, nein, unmöglich...”_ = No, no, impossible…  
>  _“Beruhig dich, Emmerich, und denk nach.”_ = Calm down, Emmerich, and think.  
>  _“Du bist tot nicht, Ezra. Du kannst nicht tot sein. Warte auf mich.”_ = You’re not dead, Ezra. You can’t be dead. Wait for me.  
>  _“Io sto bene.”_ = I’m fine.  
>  _“Ein Eiskeller.”_ = An icehouse.  
>  _Nicht tot._ = Not dead.  
>  _“Bitte, ich brauche ihn. Er ist alles.”_ = Please, I need him. He is everything.  
>  _“Halt die Klappe.”_ = Shut up.  
>  _“Viel Glück.”_ = Good luck.  
>  _“Antworte mir.”_ = Answer me.  
>  _“Es...es geht mir gut.”_ = I’m all right.  
>  _“Ich bin froh, das zu hören.”_ = I’m glad to hear it.  
>  _“Achtung.”_ = Look out.  
>  _“Mach was, Ezra!”_ = Do something, Ezra!  
>  _“Zieh.”_ = Pull.  
>  _“Du bist in Sicherheit. Ich hab dich.”_ = You’re safe now. I’ve got you.  
>  _“Dein Pistole!”_ = Your gun!  
>  _“Bist du verrückt, du Arschloch?”_ = Are you crazy, you asshole?  
>  _“Was hat er dir angetan? Bist du verletzt?”_ = What did he do to you? Are you hurt?  
>  _“No—nein, nicht wirklich. Aber du—”_ No, not much. But you—  
>  _“Ich weiß, ich weiß, I know. Wir müssen gehen. Jetzt._ ” = I know, I know, I know. We have to go. Now.  
>  _“Komm mit. Lehn dich auf mich.”_ = Come along. Rest on me.  
>  _“Bist du sicher, dass du unverletzt bist—?”_ = Are you sure that you’re unhurt—?


	8. The Lovers

It felt quite a longer journey back than it had coming, with Ezra heaving and heavy against his side. Emmerich had not wanted to return to the print house, as it was clearly no longer safe, but did not think Ezra would make it further than that. And they had gotten just inside the front doors of the back entrance before Ezra’s legs gave way beneath him, and he keeled hard into Emmerich before simply sliding towards the floor. Emmerich managed to catch him below the arms and lower him carefully the rest of the way down, letting Ezra collapse into a heap at the foot of the stairs. He then went to pull the doors shut behind them, throwing the bolt.

When he turned back round, Ezra had curled into himself and was weeping softly against his knees. 

“ _Mein Süsser,_ ” Emmerich said, going to a knee beside him on the stairs and taking him gently by the shoulders. “ _Was ist los?_ ” 

“I’m sorry,” Ezra said thickly. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t.”

“There’s nothing you’ve done—” Emmerich began, and then wondered if maybe Ezra was apologizing for the crying he was doing, which he could hardly be blamed for. He settled for saying nothing more, instead only gathering the boy into his arms and stroking his hair gently, letting Ezra rest against him and sob. 

He didn’t do it for long, and eventually he drew himself away from Emmerich and looked at him. “You came alone, for me?” His voice came thin and unsteady.

“No, I—there were others. From the Thistledown.”

Ezra’s startled laugh became a muddy cough. “You brought a brothel down upon them?” he said when he was recovered, and curled his fingers into Emmerich’s coat. “But you still came for me.”

“Of course.”

“And the things that Clavel said of me—you truly did not believe them. Even for a moment.”

“No, Ezra. I’ve told you,” Emmerich said patiently, thinking Ezra might have just forgotten in all the earlier excitement. But instead of being soothed by the reassurance, Ezra only became more agitated.

“But it must have all seemed true,” he insisted, catching Emmerich’s coat more firmly with one hand. 

“But it wasn’t.”

“But it _could have been!_ ” Ezra shook at Emmerich’s clothes, frantic. “Easily, it all could have been the truth. And yet, not even for a _moment_ did you think—“

Emmerich seized him by the shoulders. Ezra cried out, a sound that sounded more near to pain than startlement.

“Ezra, _du_ —“ Emmerich halted himself, took in a calming breath, and began again in the proper language. “Do you not understand what it means when I say that I trust you? I’ve no fear of betrayal, not from you.”

“Oh, Emery. You _are_ a fool,” Ezra said, and then began to weep again. Emmerich tried to pull him nearer, but Ezra was still determined to speak and resisted. “I _have_ betrayed you. Not in the way that they said, but I have never told you the full truth, not since the moment we met.”

Emmerich knew by now of Ezra’s fondness for the dramatic, and decided to reserve his reaction until he had heard what Ezra considered such an appalling treachery. He kept on stroking at the boy’s hair, allowing him to sniffle into his shoulder for another half-minute before Ezra drew away again.

“I want—I want to go upstairs,” Ezra said then. He took in a bolstering breath, and turned bright eyes up to Emmerich. “To our room. There are some things I need to tell you.” 

“I think you ought to rest first,” Emmerich said carefully, and smoothed a stray lock of damp, blood-stained hair from Ezra’s muddied forehead. “Or at least bathe.”

“Oh, all right,” Ezra said, agreeably enough. Emmerich thought he might be a little out of his head at the moment, either from shock or pain or this strange madness that had set upon him. But Emmerich did not mind the idea of taking care of him, not at all.

Emmerich got Ezra to his feet again and helped him to the washroom, and then to undress. He then heated the water for him while Ezra sat naked upon a stool, knees drawn up, rubbing absently at the drying cut across his forehead. When the washtub was filled enough, Emmerich guided him into it, steadying him at the elbow and with an arm across the small of his back. Ezra sank into the water, making pained sounds as heat touched the wounds on his body, until finally he was seated and shrunken in on himself in the basin.

Because he didn’t appear about to do it himself, Emmerich knelt beside the tub and began to clean Ezra carefully, rubbing a rag along his skin and pouring water over his dark hair to wash the muck and blood from it. Ezra simply let him, hissing through his teeth when Emmerich encountered the cuts and bruises on his skin, especially those on his face. The worst of his injuries was a large patch of skin already showing mottled colors along his his ribs, and the wide gash above his forehead. His nose appeared unbroken, and once the blood was cleaned away he appeared worn and tired but far less battered than before. Emmerich drew the cloth carefully over the thin set of Ezra’s shoulders and the knots of his spine; the developing body of a boy. Surely one day he would be just as strong and sturdy on his exterior as any other man, but now his nakedness betrayed his youth.

“Let me tell you what I knew of all this. What led us to where we are now,” Ezra said at length, and Emmerich could see he wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. He brought up the stool besides the tub and sat himself upon it, while Ezra pulled his knees up against his chest and locked one arm about them. It took him a moment to speak.

“Staard came to me the night before you and I met,” he said, staring down at the clouded water. “He asked me how long I wanted to go on as I had been, living in a store-room above a livery stable and often dressing in second-hand clothes from men twice my size, as I’d been for the past three years. He knew where I’d come from, what my life had been like, knew he could interest me with a promise of more.”

Ezra dragged his hand across his eyes and let it fall back to the bathwater. “And it worked. Of course I didn’t want to keep on like that. He was pleased when I said so, but he wouldn’t tell me the whole plan. For safety, he said, in case something went wrong. That should have told me right then, but…I was rash, and greedy. What I figured was...that we were double-crossing Allister.” 

“And you went along with that,” Emmerich said, old anger rising lazily in his chest at what he had lost, the convenience of his old life—despite the fact that he no longer wanted anything like it.

“God, Emmerich, but you are _foolish_ sometimes,” Ezra said. “Do you even realize what kind of life you’re living? There’s no such thing as trust, not really, not between men like this. They make truces with each other because it’s beneficial, but if something better comes along—there’s nearly no hesitation in treachery.”

“Isn’t there,” Emmerich said. If there could be no trust between men like them, what exactly was there between Ezra and himself? Emmerich trusted _him_ , and he’d been quite sure that Ezra felt the same. But perhaps that was only a fanciful illusion. Perhaps—as many of Allister’s men had often said, and as Ezra had just told him—he was simply a fool.

“Allister was nothing to me,” said Ezra. “Nor were any of his men that I had ever met before then. I’d no reason not to go along with it. I walked into that brothel thinking I knew exactly what was to happen that night. Then I came into that room and saw you, and...that was when I began to think differently. Usually it’s—well, you know who it would have been from Allister’s group, doing that part of the job.”

“Thomme or Uxilord.”

Ezra nodded. “I’ve no reason to care for either of them,” he went on. “Whatever the plan was, I wasn’t bothered about what might happen, what I might have to do. But it was you instead, and...” Ezra closed his eyes for a moment. “You were different. We were talking, and I—it’d been such a long time since anyone had spoken to me like a friend, an equal, not a strict father or a bossy elder brother, and I liked you. I don’t often like people. It’s just difficult to, the way I—the way we both live. You know.”

“I liked you as well,” Emmerich said, an unnecessary admittance that nevertheless made Ezra smile towards the grimy water.

“When the shots went,” said Ezra, after a moment, “I knew there weren’t enough of them for what I’d thought was going to happen; turning on Allister’s entire crew. Instead, two shots only; one for Kegg, one for Allister. One each from their most trusted man. Still, I didn’t fit that together, not right away. What I was thinking about was what Staard had said to me, that I’d know what to do when the time came.”

Ezra glanced away. His smile was gone, and Emmerich could not take in his next breath. “And I did know it. But I liked you. I already knew something was strange about the whole arrangement, and you felt like the only ally I had in the world in that moment. So—"

“So you shot the mattress,” Emmerich said, suddenly cold all over. “That— _scheiße_ , Ezra, that bullet should have been for me.”

Ezra took a breath and nodded. “I didn’t want you to know that I knew, even partly, about any of the plan. Not then. I wasn’t sure about you—you might’ve shot me yourself for it. But I could tell by the way you looked at me how young and innocent you thought me to be. That you wouldn’t think it very strange if I appeared to panic.”

He was right; Emmerich hadn’t thought it strange. He’d never spared another thought to that moment after it had passed, had barely remembered it until just now. And how odd it was, to hear Ezra had thought that Emmerich saw _him_ as inexperienced, and not the other way round. The way that was true. 

Ezra went on, “I thought it would earn us some time; that if they heard the shot and thought you were dead they wouldn’t come up immediately, thinking that I had a handle on things. They likely wouldn’t have come up then anyway, but I didn’t realize that then—because they knew I’d never have gone along with the real plan and I was the perfect one to pin the betrayal on afterwards, a perfect distraction for everyone in the downmarket to chase after so that no one would think too closely on the truth of everything. The money never truly mattered, whether you were alive or dead didn’t matter, it was all about putting me in that room and making me run. They _wanted_ me to run.”

“ _Gott._ ” Emmerich ran his hands down his face, twisting them into a knot beneath his chin. He could see the full reality of Ezra’s words now, exactly how everything had played out from the very first moments in the Prince and Rose, how he and Ezra had gone near flawlessly into the set up as they had been led to it. Clavel had likely considered Emmerich nothing much of a threat—an errand boy just barely lifted to higher responsibilities, with very little skills and experience, who would be of no real asset to the man that they truly meant to frame. He had, in theory, also been a perfect choice.

It was interesting then, that he had turned out to be the perfectly wrong choice. Emmerich could think of none of Allister’s men who would have allied with Ezra if they had found themselves betrayed. They would have turned on him. But Staard and Clavel had chosen to pair him and Ezra together and they had stuck, become bound together in a way they would have never been otherwise. He supposed he almost ought to thank them for it, as meeting Ezra had perhaps been one of the most fortunate things to happen to him.

“What are you thinking?” Ezra asked, palming Emmerich’s face gently and turning him.

“Only that we surprised them,” Emmerich said. “Worked their own plan against them, really.”

“Without even knowing it.” Ezra’s smile was small but lovely, even under the greyish pallor of his face and the watery mud still streaked at the edges of his hair. Emmerich lifted the rag again and rubbed it over Ezra’s brow, and felt the boy lean against the pressure of his hand.  
“Emery,” Ezra said then, softly. “I’m very sorry.”

“ _Wieso?_ ”

“Well. You were caught up in this, dragged all over this damnable city, forced into hiding, made a target by dangerous men—simply because you met me. I know it’s hardly my fault, but it is all rather because of me, isn’t it?”

“It’s of no matter,” Emmerich said. “And, Ezra, would you like to hear a truth?”

Ezra blinked heavy drops of water from his lashes. “Of course.”

“It’s been nearly ten years since I’ve had such luck in my life. Certainly since I ever came to this city. If I had to live these last few weeks over again a thousand times, I would walk into that room at the Prince and Rose and meet you again for every one of them.”

Ezra reached up and caught Emmerich’s hand. “As would I,” he said. “I truly would.”

When Ezra then wound their fingers together and held, it took Emmerich a moment to remember that they were now lovers, that affection between them was not limited only to a comradely or brotherly sort. That they could touch and look and linger as freely as they liked, as long as it was hidden from the eyes of others. Ezra’s hand entwined with his like this was rather innocent, yet breathtaking in its meaning.

Archie had never touched him so. Perhaps no one ever had.

Emmerich raised Ezra’s hand to his mouth then and pressed his lips to the wet skin there. Ezra smiled in response—though the expression was tired, he did look shyly charmed.

“Why did they take only you, this morning?” Emmerich asked then. “I was just upstairs, asleep...it would not have been difficult.”

“Because I told them you were no longer with me,” Ezra said. “They broke my arm for it, but they did believe me.”

“Oh,” Emmerich said. And then, “oh, Ezra, why didn’t you _say?_ Let me—“

“Can you mend it yourself, then?” Ezra asked as Emmerich reached across him carefully for the arm that he had all this time been keeping close to his body, held limp and strange at his side. Emmerich had noted it before, but been too consumed with other matters to think closely on it. Now he saw the bruising, the strange shape and swelling there, and his chest ached.

“You ought to see a surgeon,” Emmerich said. “We can certainly afford the cost.”

A true smile broke over Ezra’s face then, and he moved to grip Emmerich’s collar tightly with his good arm and pulled him close. For all that, the kiss was gentle and warm. Ezra ran his wet hand along the side of Emmerich’s face, stroked his cheek and jaw and brushed at the hair over his temples, and Emmerich gripped at the wooden edge of the tub to keep from falling.

#

“How is it?” Emmerich asked, for perhaps the dozenth time since the surgeon had come round to look at Ezra and set his bones to rights. The break had been clean, fortuitously so, and the surgeon had assured them that Ezra’s mending would be reasonably quick and he would suffer no lingering effects.

“Fine, Emery, it’s quite fine,” Ezra said in something of a lazy drawl. His arm was now wrapped into a thick cast of plasters and bolstered in a sling. “It doesn’t even hurt any longer.”

“That’s because you’ve breathed enough ether to ease a woman’s labor,” Emmerich muttered, and Ezra laughed, lolling his head back against the back edge of Luca’s chair and looking to the ceiling.

They were preparing to leave the print house for good. As Staard had sent his men straight here to collect Ezra, it was no longer safe. They were only waiting for Luca to return, as the man was nowhere to be found in the print house and there had been a sign on the workers’ entrance announcing the place closed for the day. Emmerich assumed the man had gone to find a surgeon of his own, for the head wound he had suffered. But they wished to tell Luca that he also ought to quit the place entirely for the present, and so here they remained until he returned. And also until Ezra was able to walk a straight line for more than two paces without a bout of unbearable dizziness from the ether.

They had not yet discussed where they ought to go, but Emmerich favored the idea of the Thistledown, and not only to assure himself of the well-being of the women there who had aided them. Miss Ingsbel had already shown she had no fear of these men, and aside from Vena there was little to tie either of them to the place. Vena had also done well at disguising the fact that she was employed there; a connection between her and the print house would be made with difficulty. They might not be found there for a very long time.

There was also a third reason they could not yet go anywhere—Ezra was wholly unpresentable. His movements had all become the clumsy actions of a man half-drunk, giddy on spirits. He had not favored keeping all of his clothes on once the surgeon had departed, complaining of heat and discomfort, and was now only wearing his trousers and a mostly unbuttoned shirt. His braces and boots were elsewhere, his feet entirely bare, his usually neat hair falling rakishly over his face. Emmerich heated just to look at him in this state, unkempt and tousled as if just roused from a lover’s bed.

Ezra seemed to sense this, for his eyes became bright and his own face flushed as they stared at each other from across the small office, his chest beginning to rise and fall with more eagerness. Emmerich had to look away, for this was hardly the time for such things. Ezra was injured, and he was clearly not possessed of all his wits, and they ought to be leaving soon, and—

A shadow fell over him, and Emmerich looked up to find Ezra climbing into his chair, straddling his lap and settling himself with his weight on Emmerich’s thighs. But he was still injured despite his nonchalance about it—not only his arm, but the various maladies he had suffered at the hands of his previous employer’s men. Doubtless he felt rather free of all of them under the persistent influence of the ether. But Emmerich had not forgotten.

“Ezra, sto—oh, well, all right,” he tried, as Ezra looped his sound arm about his neck, and leant heavily against him. “Now just say put here; no moving about.”

“Mm, if you insist,” Ezra said, taking his arm from Emmerich’s neck to drop it down between them.

“Ezra—“ Emmerich began, as Ezra’s fingers began to move upon him. “I’m very glad you’re all right, but—“  
“Oh, yes, I see that,” Ezra said. His good hand continued to trace the front of Emmerich’s trousers with clumsy fingers, doubtless made that way from the ether. “I feel it, as well.”

“All _right._ No more of that.” Emmerich got a firm grip on Ezra’s shoulder and steered the boy back from him until he was sitting in his own chair again. “We’ve to decide what next to do. This isn’t over yet.”

“That’s not nearly as enjoyable,” Ezra sighed, but he made no moves back towards Emmerich.

“Do we agree that the Thistledown is the best place for now?” Emmerich questioned, and Ezra seemed to nod. Or perhaps he was only falling asleep. “I assume Miss Ingsbel will have us there for cheap. Not that it matters so much, with the money. And—what?”

Ezra was now watching him with a soft little smile, his chin tilted down to his shoulder and a lock of hair falling across his eyes.

“You’re very handsome,” he said affectionately. “Did you know?”

“Ezra, please concentrate,” said Emmerich, a sudden heat about his ears.

“Tiresome.” Ezra tipped his head back over the edge of the chair, baring the line of his throat, then let it fall forward again until his chin lolled near against his collarbone. “But all right. What shall I concentrate on?”

“What we ought to do next.”

“Well. Clavel must be dead,” Ezra said, and Emmerich agreed. He had seen the amount of blood himself, the ragged wound and Clavel’s final glassy stare—there was little chance the man had recovered. “That leaves any remaining men under Staard, I would think. Hmm, yes, I would think.”

“There was no other who I would think could take lead of them,” said Emmerich. He did not know how many had even survived the shootout in the ice house, or if Staard even still lived. “If in fact they feel any loyalty to him at all.”

“There’d be few other places for them to go. Unless they too have all struck out on their own. Which would make them far less of a threat.” Ezra swung his leg up so that the back of his bare heel dropped down upon Emmerich’s thigh, and then crossed his other foot on the top of it. His expression was a rather comic dare for Emmerich to protest. Emmerich did not, only smiled and rested his hand against Ezra’s ankle beneath his trouser leg. His skin was warm, and small hairs tickled the skin of Emmerich’s palm.

“The question is, do they care more or less about us now,” Emmerich said, even as Ezra’s eyes wandered away from him. A frustrating conversation this was proving to be, though hardly Ezra’s fault for all the ether he had taken. “Will they double their efforts, or leave us—“

Emmerich lost his words suddenly as Ezra made a soft sound that was near to a moan, his hand traveling down to the soft bulge forming at the front of his trousers and rubbing at it, making small low noises as he did that were wholly inappropriate for Luca’s office.

“ _Ezra,_ ” Emmerich said, though the lewd sight was startlingly appealing.

“No, no good,” Ezra said in mild upset, and peered down between his legs, where nothing further was happening. “Nothing more than this.”

“I think you ought to go to bed. Alone,” said Emmerich faintly, because he would not take advantage of Ezra in this near-drunken state. Perhaps they would be safe enough here til the morning. Ezra was clearly not fit for being in public, and there was little hope of encountering not a single soul on the journey across the river to the Thistledown.

Ezra glanced to him, looking aggrieved. “Alone?”

“Alone,” Emmerich affirmed, though with a certain amount of regret.

“I’ll stay here then,” Ezra said with a stubborn firmness, but he did at least cease fondling at himself. He did not seem to be able to remember things from moment to moment, because now he was inspecting the sling and casing on his arm and frowning. “This rather hurts.”

“It’s been broken,” Emmerich reminded him.

“Yes, that’s right.” Ezra sighed, and tilted his head back against the chair. The physical effects of the ether must be wearing off, though Ezra was clearly far from firm in mind.

Right then, there came a loud and persistent knock at the print house door. The sound resounded down the silent workroom and over the quiet machinery, the echoes of it ringing like a struck bell. Emmerich startled badly, but Ezra only yawned.

“Ezra,” Emmerich hissed, and pushed Ezra’s foot from his knee, regaining his feet. “Get up—we’ve got to leave at once, we oughtn’t even have come back here, they’ve come back—“

“Mm, no,” Ezra said idly, resisting as Emmerich took his arms and tried to pull him out of his chair. He looked up at Emmerich with his pale eyes more soft and unworried than they had ever been, or ought to be. “They’ve _knocked.”_

Slowly, Emmerich drew away. “I suppose they wouldn’t knock first if they were here to kill us,” he said, and Ezra lifted his good shoulder languidly.

“So. It must be someone else.”

“Yes, but who,” Emmerich muttered. He reached automatically for the bulldog in his holster but found only the unfamiliar sleek grip of the Lutreole there; Imogen still had possession of the bulldog. Of the two of them, Ezra was the better shot, drugged or not. So Emmerich held the Lutreole out to him, and after frowning for a moment, Ezra took it with very careful movements. He propped the butt of the pistol on his knee; even so, Emmerich saw that his hand was unsteady.

“Don’t worry,” Ezra said, half an impish smile upon his face. “I won’t attempt to actually shoot anyone. I’ll only sit here and look threatening.”

Emmerich couldn’t bring himself to tell Ezra he had never looked less threatening in the entire time they had known each other; half-undressed as he was with a boyish flush still coloring his face, and still obviously indecent below the waist. But he went to answer the door.

One of the printing machines was half disassembled, likely having broken down and in the process of being repaired. As he passed Emmerich grabbed what looked to be a large square wooden paddle, inset with metal casings, from where it lay atop the machine. Even if he had no pistol upon him, he would not be unarmed.

But the faces he saw when he opened the alley door threw him into such startlement that he nearly dropped the paddle. Uxilord and Thomme, two of the men he had formerly been employed with, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the alleyway.

Uxilord had clearly been in the path of somebody's bullet at the ice house; his arm was set in heavy plasters just as Ezra’s was, and he favored it against his side. Thomme looked unhurt, though stains that appeared to be blood had soaked through much of his greyish coat. Of the ones to have survived the ice house nearly untouched, Emmerich would not have wagered on these two. Neither was the brightest man, which perhaps was what had made them rather accommodating towards Emmerich, nearly comradely at times. They had deemed him worthy of idle chatter occasionally, mostly of bawdry and foolish topics. At least Uxilord had, as Thomme spoke rarely and rather abruptly when he did, his voice usually clotted with drink or smoke or the ailment that seemed to bestow him with a perpetual bounty of phlegm.

“What?” was the only word that Emmerich could call to his tongue upon seeing them, any others were in a language these men would not understand.

“I hope we ain’t disturbing you none,” Uxilord said, peering about rather anxiously. “We only come to make our amends.”

“ _What,_ ” Emmerich repeated, as Thomme gave a low burbling cough and wrung at a flat cap in his hands.

“Always liked you, didn’t we, Rufus?” Uxilord said, and Thomme nodded quite earnestly. “Even if you talk a bit queer. Not fond of what Clavel planned, not one bit, we weren’t. Now he’s dead, we can come out right and say that, can’t we?” Thomme continued to nod along with every word, as though his head were set upon a gimbal. 

Emmerich remembered abruptly the way that Uxilord had grasped his hand after he and Thomme had finished wedging the at-the-time mysterious trunk beneath the bed at the Prince and Rose, and said to him with unusual sincerity, “best of luck, lad.” He had nearly forgotten it, but it was the existence of that moment which made Emmerich truly believe these men were on the level.

“I—Clavel is dead, then,” Emmerich said, and tried to reach inside himself to find some regret or sadness, and could find none. Not after what he had nearly done to Ezra.

“Oh, aye, dead as you please,” said Uxilord. “Staard though, he got himself away, he did. Him and—oh, how many would you say, Rufus? Ten? Aye, ten others, at the least.”

Ten was still a rather threatening amount, as Ezra and Emmerich were still only two in number. Emmerich would not count on Uxilord and Thomme as true allies quite yet, not until he had learned more from them. Certainly no longer enemies, however.

“I suppose you—come inside, then,” Emmerich said, and moved back up the stairwell to allow the other two men in. Thome was carrying a large and rather cumbersome looking haversack on one shoulder, which Emmerich eyed with some caution. It was likely something harmless, but not the most reassuring way to present themselves. 

“Who’ve we got, Emery?” Ezra called from the office, sounding much less out-of-mind than before. Perhaps he was putting an effort into it. Ezra was familiar with these men, as it was usually one of them that would have been in Emmerich’s place at the Prince and Rose that night, so perhaps introductions would be redundant. When they got nearer the office, Emmerich saw that Ezra had dragged the chair outside of it and was sitting in it against the wall, his pistol resting upright atop his thigh.

Emmerich was glad to see he had at least done up his shirt, so that he did not appear quite such a slattern, though he was still without shoes. At seeing Thomme and Uxilord traipsing along after Emmerich, he cocked his head in curiosity.

“Well. I know you,” he said. “Taken leave of your comrades for good then, have you?”

Thomme and Uxilord glanced at each other, and Emmerich frowned. He had not considered that, yet it had been Ezra’s first thought. If had seemed as if these men only wanted to express regret at Emmerich’s mistreatment, but had they truly decided to abandon the men who remained with Staard and strike out on their own? Ezra had theorized such a thing, not so many minutes ago.

“They ain’t much of comrades, anymore,” Uxilord said. “Most of them who we knew ain’t so alive. Staard, well—he don’t know us much either. We ain’t so keen to work for him.”

“So it’s mostly his men who survived,” Ezra said. “And they’ll stay together, I would imagine.”

“Seems so,” Uxilord agreed. Their ease in conversation with each other was no doubt from the times they had spent doing the very job together that had gotten Ezra and Emmerich into this mess. And Ezra did not address Thomme at all, so he was also aware of his reticence in speaking.

For a long stretch of moments, there was silence between them all. Emmerich did notice that Ezra’s hand which gripped the pistol was trembling. From exhaustion, weakness, or pain—perhaps all three? Emmerich could not comfort him for any of them, not at this moment. He wished Uxilord and Thomme would state their business and depart, so he could tend to his lover. And Ezra seemed to have the same thoughts.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said. “The information is of value, and we thank you for it. Have you need of our assistance in some way, or shall we conclude our business here?”

“Also brought you something, we did,” Uxilord said, and nudged Thomme. “Have it out, Rufus."

“Wait.”

The objection came from Ezra, sharp and sudden, and he raised the Lutreole from his thigh. He was beginning to sweat now along the sides of his face and neck. He must have been beginning to feel stronger pain from his arm; his jaw was clenched and his pistol hand was shaking more with each second.

“It’s all right, Ezra,” Emmerich said, catching his eye and trying to impress upon him that neither of these men were clever enough to be setting some sort of trap, or would even be able to act as a distraction without giving it all away. It was a difficult thing to convey through only a look, and so Emmerich just hoped that Ezra would trust him.

And, after a moment, Ezra lowered his pistol. “All right,” he said, and Thomme obligingly swung the large haversack off his shoulder and held it out to Emmerich.

“Was all we could get, it was,” he said, the first words he had spoken since appearing at the alleyway door. As usual, his voice was thick and rheumy. “We was sent to fetch them from some old shopkeep a whiles back, so as you couldn’t be havin’ ‘em.”

“Mayhaps you’ve no need of them now,” Uxilord put in. “But it’s a show of our good will, it is, to give ‘em back.”

Emmerich and Ezra exchanged a look, and though Ezra looked rather fit to faint, he rose unsteadily from the chair and followed Emmerich inside Luca’s office. There Emmerich opened the haversack while Uxilord and Thomme hung about in the doorway, and reached inside to immediately encounter the cold metal barrel of a pistol. He withdrew it, curiously, examining it a moment before handing it to Ezra. Ezra glanced it over as well, and then placed it on the desk. 

Emmerich continued to remove items from the haversack and Ezra placed them neatly in rows, until there were three pistols and a various assortment of bullets, cleaning tools, spare parts, bullet molds, and other accoutrements spread over Luca’s desk. No doubt Ezra would know what they were all for, but most were strange and unfamiliar to Emmerich. When he glanced back to Thomme and Uxilord, both seemed expectant, as if waiting for an opinion on their offering.

“These are beautiful,” Ezra said, running one hand near reverently above the three pistols without touching them. Two were clearly a matched set, and the last even larger and heavier than the bulldog in pale wood and brass. The twins were long and sleek, rich brown wood with scrollwork of raised silver down their entire lengths, perhaps tending towards opulence; rather fancy but still quite fetching. Emmerich could not take his eyes from them, and Ezra noticed where his attention was focused. 

“Pepperboxes. Like mine. Likely a dueling set, from when such things were allowed. Do you like them?”

“I—” Emmerich said, and could speak no further.

“They’re made to be quite accurate,” Ezra said, sliding his hand gently down Emmerich’s wrist, lifting his hand, and placing it atop the grip of one of the pistols. “Reliable, as well. Identical to each other in use. They would suit you.”

“I have a gun,” Emmerich finally managed. He had had reason to object to the Acllaum pistols—they had looked delicate, too small for his hands, and he preferred something sturdy and heavy. These were...

“And where is it?” Ezra asked, and Emmerich remembered that the bulldog was halfway across the city in a brothel. Ezra watched him carefully for a moment, then let go his grip, leaving Emmerich’s finger loosely curled around the pistol’s handle. “Just for now then, at least. For me.”

There was no arguing then. For Ezra; anything.

Emmerich lifted the pepperbox, found its weight satisfying and the silver embellishments cool against his palm. It was a good fit in his hand, the trigger accessible. He did not see, however, how one might load it. Ezra, as naturally as though he were listening to Emmerich’s thoughts, reached in to show him how the barrels could be slid forward, though neither one of them placed a bullet inside. The touch of Ezra’s hands against his, their closeness, so overt in this room in front of other men, sent oddly expectant thrills through Emmerich’s body.

For a moment he thought he might forget himself, and kiss Ezra there in front of several people whom it would be very unwise to do so. The expression upon Ezra’s face looked as though he were nearly about to do the same, and Emmerich turned away before either of them could make such a blunder. It was strange how easy it was to forget. Every other act he had done with a man had been secreted away, hidden by darkness and shame, never spoken of, never acknowledged. But the desire to kiss Ezra in the daylight felt so natural as to be disarming. 

Distantly, he heard Uxilord speaking, and desperately turned his attention towards the man to catch his last words, “—glad my brother and I could be o’ some use.” 

“I didn’t know you were brothers,” said Emmerich, glancing rapidly between the two men who appeared nothing alike. Uxilord was lean and rather stooped in the shoulders, fair-haired and fair-skinned, while Thomme was ruddy and thicker-set. Though, they were both of a height and shared the same bottle-green eyes.

“We have a different mother each, don’t we, but we’re brothers all the same,” said Thomme, with another of his sincere nods. The same father, and yet, their surnames differed. Emmerich found it more prudent to not inquire about the specifics.

“Well. Thank you, for these,” Emmerich said, and held out his hand towards Uxilord. The other man took it in knobbly fingers, they shook once, and then Emmerich turned to do the same with Thomme. But the other man did not offer his hand, and instead appeared to be bolstering himself to offer some words.

“We was wonderin’ if you might have use of men like us,” he spoke at last.

“We ain’t sure of your plans, of course,” Uxilord hurried to add. “If you’ll be needin a crew. But if you do…”

A crew. Was that what he and Ezra were becoming—or what others were beginning to perceive them as? No longer scapegoats in hiding, but a rival force on their own, a power worth seeking out to join with. Whatever the truth of it was, he was far too exhausted to think of this matter now, and Ezra had to be doubly so.

“Meet us tomorrow afternoon, at—the Prince and Rose. We’ll speak more of this then,” Emmerich said, deciding at the last moment it would not be wise to direct these men to the Thistledown, simply out of safety. At his side Ezra nodded, and this time Thomme took Emmerich’s hand when they offered it. Then the two men—the unlikeliest of brothers—departed from the print house into the late afternoon light. How the day had passed so quickly, Emmerich could not even imagine. It seemed that not so long ago he had woken to find Ezra gone from his side.

And the day was still far from over. They still had to wait for and speak to Luca, go to the Thistledown and hope to be provided a place to stay, and if not then they would have to search out other arrangements, and—

“Let’s just leave a note for Luca,” Ezra said suddenly, sounding very worn. “Who knows when he’ll return here. And I believe I can walk well enough now. If we mean to leave, we ought to do it before any others find us.”

Emmerich quite agreed.

#

 

It was near sundown by the time they reached the Thistledown, and upon crossing the threshold were immediately swarmed by several women—Katharine and Franny among them, Emmerich noted, but also others who seemed have heard the entirety of the tale of the ice house and had only Lilin’s word that the two of them had survived. They seemed equally interested to hear of the fate of Johan Staard, and Emmerich could not bring himself to tell them that he had survived and thus professed ignorance. Ezra’s bandaged arm was fussed over some and he accepted it good-naturedly while assuring them it was hardly anything. He was quite good at hiding his pain, the only hints of it were in the tightness around his eyes and the occasional slow controlled breath he took when no one but Emmerich was looking.

Miss Ingsbel suddenly appeared on the stairs and quieted the flock. Her presence alone sent most of the women back to what they had been doing—the parlor itself and the larger room beyond were rather empty, though Emmerich imagined it would populate with customers as the night grew deeper. A few men sat smoking and playing cards, paying no real attention to anything else happening around them.

It fell mostly to Emmerich to briefly explain their situation and present their request for a place to stay, as he thought he had something of a better rapport with Miss Ingsbel. He was not even sure how often Ezra had spoken with her, what they thought of each other. After all, most of Ezra’s time here had been spent arguing with Vena or spending his time with Lilin.

“Of course you may have a room here,” Miss Ingsbel said, when Emmerich had finished. “If you have the money for it.”

“We do, of course,” Emmerich said, mindful of the satchels he and Ezra carried at their sides, finally removed from within the walls of the print house and quite full of money. 

Miss Ingsbel passed a glance at them as well. “The attic is rarely used, you may have the use of it.”

“We appreciate your hospitality,” said Ezra, and at once Miss Ingsbel turned a sharp eye on him. 

“It’s not hospitality, Mister Lace. Simply business. Your presence here is not particularly safe for myself and my girls, yet a paying customer is always an asset. As long as you keep yourselves unobtrusive here, you may stay.”

“Understood,” said Emmerich, and Miss Ingsbel passed him a rather undecipherable look.

“One of the girls can show you the room, if you cannot find it yourselves,” she said, and then turned about in a swish of skirts and returned upstairs.

“I never even told her my surname,” Ezra said with some puzzlement, and Emmerich was unsurprised that Miss Ingsbel had somehow learned it. Nothing about the woman would truly shock him. “She didn’t even say how much she wanted for the room.”

“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,” Emmerich said, and at the same moment he heard a soft sound behind him, a light clearing of a throat. He turned about to find the girl Imogen standing behind him.

"Here," she said quite suddenly and softly, and produced a pistol from her skirts. The bulldog, Emmerich realized after she held it out towards him, the barrel aimed towards the rugs. "Thank you for the use of it."

"I should rather be thanking you for using it," Emmerich said, and Imogen favored him with a smile he had never seen. She seemed so young, younger even than Vena perhaps. He wished he could take her from here, every one of them, all the girls and the women and even Lilin. They were strong and quite capable, as he had personally witnessed, but that strength eventually ran out. A life like this perhaps allowed one to survive, but at too high a price. He knew that well.

“Keep it,” he told her. “You’re in more need of it than I am, I would imagine. I know it’s not particularly an impressive thing—”

“It’s fine.” Imogen held the pistol rather shyly. “Sometimes, the presence of something is more effective than the use of it. I’ll keep it well.”

She turned then to go up the stair herself, perhaps to put away the pistol in a safe place. Emmerich watched her go, an odd sensation in his chest that was not quite like loss, but rather a bittersweet sense of change, of things in the world moving on and Emmerich finally allowed to move with it. He and Ezra now stood alone in the parlor. The quiet of the room settled itself around them, but for the wind that whistled through thin cracks in the walls.

A pressure against his arm startled him. Ezra had slipped up quietly beside him, and had leant the shoulder of his sound arm to Emmerich’s. Their hands brushed, and Emmerich smiled at the gentle touch.

“Emery,” Ezra said, in a voice that was low and promising and warmed Emmerich from within. He joined their hands and threaded their fingers. “Let’s go to bed.”

“God,” Emmerich said with a laugh. “Your arm’s been broken, Ezra. How can you think of such a thing?” 

Ezra’s hand tightened upon his. “I don’t much care. I’ve had worse pain.”

“Are you even in your own mind again?” Emmerich said, and Ezra smiled.

“Doesn’t it seem so?”

“It’s difficult to tell sometimes, with you,” said Emmerich, and Ezra laughed and caught him round the waist.

“We’ll only sleep, then,” he said, an impish smile bright on his face. “If you’re so worried.”

“Less every moment.”

“But now I insist.” Ezra’s grin became infused with more mischief. “We’ll only sleep.”

#

The small bed in the dusty attic room had a thin mattress and creaked terribly; every small movement had brought a wailing of the bolts inside the wood. Emmerich had tried to tighten them with some success, but they still occasionally gave a long and reedy squeal. True to Ezra’s word, they had gone to bed with the intent to sleep, but were only lying awake together in the dark. Moonlight came in at the small window, just enough to see each other by.

“Ezra.” Emmerich moved his fingers in Ezra’s hair, and turned the boy’s face gently towards him on the pillow.

“Mm.” Ezra’s smile was languid and sweet, and Emmerich drew his thumb lightly across the attractive shape of it.

“Tell me about the other,” he said. “The boy you were with before.”

To his surprise, Ezra laughed. “He wasn’t a boy at all. Likely he was near the age then that you are now.”

“I suppose I ought to be glad you favor older men,” Emmerich said, and Ezra laughed again, his fingers tracing across Emmerich’s stomach.

“It does seems to happen that way,” he said. “Jasper—for that was his name—was at least ten years my elder. He was tall and dark and educated and I thought he was beautiful. I was very foolish, and very in love with him. I would have done anything for him…and I let him do anything he wanted with me. I thought the things he did meant he loved me in turn. I know now they didn’t. I was nothing much more than his convenient, one he needn’t ply with gifts or money.”

Ezra shifted onto his back, setting the bed frame to soft squalling. He spoke then towards the ceiling, while Emmerich lay upon his side and watched him. “I was living in our country estate then. We’ve the residence in the city proper, of course, but I grew up mostly in Kettingsfeld Park. I was only fifteen years when I met him. I was engaged to his sister Orpha, I’ve told you that, and they would come together in his carriage—he as a chaperone, she to become acquainted with the house, with me. The first time I saw him…”

He spread a hand across his bare stomach, fingers taught. “It was like a rush of fire, here, and it spread through every part of myself. It ate at me like nothing else. There was nothing else I could think of but him, not for weeks, until they came again. I never thought he would pay me any mind, just the silly little boy his sister would marry, but—in the garden one day, he found me alone. Brought me to the gardener’s shed. Took everything I had then to offer. I gave it to him, all willingly. I wanted so very much to please him, any way I could. My life became his.”

Emmerich found himself holding on to a breath, and Ezra was not even through speaking.

“He always visited with her, as it was suitable and proper for us being future brothers-in-law to become acquainted. And he sought me out every time. I thought it all so terribly exciting. Greeting them so properly in the parlor, taking a walk through the back gardens with Orpha, knowing that later on she and my sister would go into the sitting room to embroider and talk of all the matters of high society, and Jasper and I would go upstairs together. In the same house as my own family and fiancée, in my own bed, with such risk of being discovered. That was how we were discovered, in the end.

“I ought to have hung for it, so I suppose what happened to me was the kinder punishment. Though, I can’t imagine I was expected to do as well as I have—likely I wasn’t expected to even sustain my own life for very long. But I’ve always been willing to do what needs to be done. I had to do quite a lot then, but I did it all, and I survived.”

Ezra wound himself a little closer to Emmerich’s side then, breath hot across his chest. There were a few minutes of silence between them, and then Ezra said, “you think me a fool.”

“I think you were young,” Emmerich said. “I think a man who only wanted a bit of fun didn’t understand what he could do to you. I think I want to kill him for it, but it wouldn’t do any good now.”

“I’ve thought the same, many times,” Ezra said.

“And how did this man escape any sort of punishment? If you were discovered together—“

“Oh, he placed the entirety of the blame on me. Told everyone that was I was brash and wanton and had forced myself upon him in a lustful fit. He had a wife and child, a name and reputation built for himself, and his word was taken far beyond mine. Of course, my defense was that we were deeply in love.” Ezra laughed, with little mirth. “His story was much more agreeable.”

Emmerich frowned. “And they believed all that of you?”

Ezra shifted again, his head settling more snugly against Emmerich’s shoulder. He had removed the sling from his arm, and the plaster scratched against Emmerich’s bare skin. “I had a reputation of being...somewhat imprudent, in our circle of society,” he said. “It was why my family was arranging my marriage at so young an age. I believe they hoped that if I were to become a husband, then a father, I would have to fall in line with respectability.

“I doubt that would have happened even then. I couldn’t have bedded Orpha even if I hadn’t been so in love with Jasper, just the thought of it—it sets me on edge even now, as though I’m flooded with cold and iron. Through no fault of her own; she was charming and clever and I truly was fond of her. She didn’t deserve what I would have done to her. I would have been leaving her bed to find other men, because I had to. I would have had to.”

Emmerich understood that all too well. It was why he had been reckless enough to engage as he had with Archie, rather than the still unlawful but much more common route with whores. Because Archie was a man; the only thing that had ever truly satisfied him. Because he simply had to.

“So perhaps Jasper did us both a favor, in that he saved her from me,” Ezra said. “Still, I thought about climbing into his bedroom and killing him in his sleep every night, for at least a year. Two, perhaps. Sometimes I still want to see his face again, if only so he could see me as I am now. That I survived despite him.”

“I’d help you,” Emmerich said fiercely. “If you wanted still to do so.”

Ezra only kissed him in reply, deep and lingering, combing his fingers through Emmerich’s hair.

“No,” he said, when he pulled away. “It was a resolve that kept me going in the beginning, but now it’s only a bitter fantasy. He never promised me anything, gave any suggestion that he truly cared for me, and in the end he was only trying to save himself as anyone would. In that way, I understand him perfectly.”

“How could he not care for you,” Emmerich said, and Ezra lifted his head so he could look down into Emmerich’s face.

“I wasn’t always so loveable,” he said, and though his tone was amused his face was serious. “Even now, there are few who do. Even before all this, I’ve never been as good a man as you are.”

“ _Du bist_ —“ Emmerich began, but Ezra pressed fingers over his mouth.

“Shh,” he said. “Please, don’t say it. I know you may believe it, but I’m not. And I do hate to disappoint you.”

“You don’t,” Emmerich said, catching at him and pulling him close. “You can’t, you don't, _unmöglich—_ "

“Oh, Emery, stop,” Ezra said, and pushed him away. “You think me so perfect, I don’t know where you’ve got this idea from. I’m truly far from desirable. Perhaps physically there’s appeal, but more than that...there’s little to endear me to anyone, and I don’t pretend otherwise.”

_Nasty little rotter, an ill-bred cur to be put down, bloody little mandrake_ , Emmerich remembered, and pushed all the words from his mind at once. Except perhaps the very last one, which was truer than the man who had spoken it knew, but that was only in Emmerich’s favor. But he had never seen any evidence of the other accusations—perhaps Ezra was quick to temper and unhesitant to end a life if need be, but Emmerich had never known him to be cruel or malicious only for the sake of it, not in the way he seemed to think of himself. He had only just spoken of having no remaining ill-will towards the man who had all but ruined his life, and though fully capable of doing so, had never harmed him and had no desire to any longer. Which was in truth something Emmerich was not innocent of himself. The men who had killed his father…he had—

“Emery,” Ezra’s voice shook him from the past, brought him back to the warm bed and welcoming body that lay beside him, fingers playing questioningly in his hair.

“Is that truly how you consider yourself, Ezra? Every time I think I know you—” Emmerich said, and Ezra caught his wrist.

“You do know me,” he said. “I’ve been nothing but true to myself with you, since the moment we met. Perhaps more so than I ever have with anyone. I’ve never had cause to be anyone different.”

“Then, what you are is a good man,” Emmerich said. “I won’t hear otherwise.”

Ezra sighed, pressed his lips to Emmerich’s forehead. “If you must,” he murmured. “But I did warn you.”

“Noted,” said Emmerich. “But I’ll have my chances.”

There was quiet between them for a time, and Emmerich did not find it uncomfortable. Ezra lay on his back beside him, eyes open towards the ceiling and his hand warm on Emmerich’s bare thigh.

“Emery, how old _are_ you?” he said at length. “I’ve only just realized that I don’t know.”

“Nor do I,” Emmerich said, and Ezra cocked his head. “I may have known once, but—I lost count of years and time somewhere during everything. Five and twenty is the most likely. Perhaps a little older. No use asking the year of my birth; I never knew that. I don’t know what the year is now.”

“Oh, Emery, how can you not know?” Ezra said, with a laugh that sounded dismayed.

“There are quite a few things I don’t know,” Emmerich said, wondering how much he would astonish Ezra if he admitted to his tenuous ability at literacy. He was sharing a bed with an educated gentleman, after all, and though they may have ended up with the same life, they certainly hadn’t begun with it. Emmerich had never felt to be an inferior being to his lover, but perhaps Ezra did not think likewise.

But Ezra was now watching him with the same eyes he often had when he was thinking deeply—and not only that, but considering Emmerich in a way that no one ever had bothered to before.

“You don’t believe that I think less of you for it, I would hope,” Ezra said then. “You couldn’t help how you were born, the same way I couldn’t.”

“There’s nothing wrong with how I was born.”

“I know that,” Ezra said, and made a faint sound of frustration. “That isn’t what I meant at all. I’m only saying that the things that are simple for me, that I was provided from birth, that I’ve taken for granted—I understand, very well now, how lucky I was to have them. If I looked down on all others who didn’t have the same fortune, well. There’d be hardly any man I could respect.”

“And I should take that to mean that you do, in truth, respect me,” Emmerich said. “Regardless of my humble beginnings.”

Ezra put a hand to Emmerich’s face, turned him so they were made to look at each other’s faces. “Perhaps more than anyone,” he said, and it was so very earnest that Emmerich could do nothing but believe him.

“Then will you—“ Emmerich began, faltered, and then resolved himself, “would you help me, then, to read and write? I never learnt properly.”

Ezra looked at him with no trace of scorn or pity, and stroked Emmerich’s cheek gently with his fingertips. “Of course,” he said. “When would you like to begin?”

“Well, not now,” Emmerich said, and drew Ezra closer to him, watchful of the boy’s bandaged arm. Ezra laughed, a bright sound, and kissed him eagerly and at length.

“Your beard’s grown,” Ezra said, when they pulled apart, and spread his fingers across the angle of Emmerich’s jaw.

“And what do you think?”

“That it suits you,” Ezra replied, and kissed him again. More heated this time, with a sweet slowness that only spurred Emmerich to grip his hands around the boy’s waist and hoist him into his lap. They had gone to bed already unclothed, and their kissing had awakened both of them, and now they slid against each other other with an awareness that pulled a gasp from Ezra and a low groan from Emmerich. He had insisted upon abstaining from such intimacy tonight, but Ezra seemed back to himself now, and in the proper mood.

“If I’m very careful, will you let me?” Emmerich implored, touching a hand to Ezra in such a way as to make what he was asking clear. There had been none of that their first night together, though Emmerich had sorely wanted it. But he could only remember the revolted look upon Archie’s face whenever he had suggested the same act. Emmerich could not have stood that same look coming from Ezra, and so he had not dared that first night and had rutted himself between Ezra’s thighs instead. But now…he thought that if any man would ever allow him that deepest familiarity, it would be Ezra.

And Ezra made a faint noise at the words and the touch, a strange union of a desirous moan and a release of excited breath.

“Yes,” he said, his voice thick and heady. “Oh, yes.”

So Emmerich pressed his hand forward against that intimate place and Ezra pressed back, his spine arching and shoulders twisting, lifting himself slightly on his knees to allow Emmerich a better reach. There was a jar of oil already on the bedside table, its purpose clear due to the nature of this establishment, and Emmerich made use of it well. A low sound welled and broke in Ezra’s throat as he did; his head tipped back and his unbound hand slid up his stomach to his chest, playing and stroking at his own chest as Emmerich worked at him with his fingers. And when he was loosened enough and Emmerich meant to breach him in the true way, they needed only a slight and careful arranging of themselves until Ezra was slowly settled in the cradle of Emmerich’s hips, and they were joined.

Ezra was quite eager in this way, made good use of his one good arm to brace himself o Emmerich’s chest while his knees and thighs did most of the work. The bed rocked with their weight, the bolts squealing in effort, and Ezra laughed breathlessly when Emmerich implored them to quiet down. They kissed, and kissed again, and Emmerich found himself crying out in a way he had always stifled deep within himself, a helpless sounds torn loose by Ezra’s eagerness, his touch, his trust. When Emerich could no longer bear it, he braced an arm ‘round Ezra’s back and rolled the boy beneath him, pinned him heavily to the mattress and heaved into him with great mindless thrusts, groaning with desperate need and feeling that part of Ezra hot and slick and siding between their bellies. Ezra’s cries matched his own, gasping and keening as they wrenched their completion from each other, reaching the sweetest height together and nearly at the same moment.

Ezra made a soft sound of protest when Emmerich left him, then gripped him tightly with his sound arm and pressed his face into Emmerich’s chest. Emmerich closed his own arms gently around the boy’s back, their skin damp and slick together, and held him close. His heartbeat slowly faded from a thundering clatter to a gentle pattering, and Ezra’s breathing likewise evened out. Emmerich moved his fingers over the nape of Ezra’s neck, stroking the dusting of hairs there that ran up into the thicker stuff on his head. Ezra hummed against him at the touch, sounding pleased.

“I did not hurt you?” Emmerich asked, because he could not help but worry. He had forgotten Ezra’s injured arm when he had pinned the boy beneath him and finished their passion together, but was now guiltily remembered of it.

“ _Mach dir keine Sorgen,_ ” Ezra murmured, half in sleep. “ _Du warst sanft. Ich hatte keine Schmerzen._ ”

Emmerich smiled against the boy’s dampened hair. The wind gusted against the windows once again, setting the shutters to rattling and banging in their frame, and a hard rain began to sheet down on the roof above. Emmerich would have appreciated the noise of it a few minutes past, when it could have covered the eager noises of their desire, but he supposed the Thistledown was inured to such sounds. Though, perhaps, not those of two men together.

Sometime later—an hour, perhaps, or more—Ezra must have thought him asleep. Because Emmerich felt the boy stir beside him, turn beneath the arm that Emmerich had loosely draped around him, and then begin to speak.

“With Jasper, the fire came so fast and fierce—roared and consumed everything I had and burned itself out in me, left me hollow. There was nothing left.” Ezra’s voice came in less than a whisper, words that nearly had no sound to them at all. With his eyes closed, Emmerich strained to hear them through the sounds of the rain, and to keep his breathing even so as not to startle Ezra back into silence. A soft hand touched his face in the dark, and withdrew just as swiftly.

“This, for you…it came more slowly, but everything about you feeds it. It grows steadily, not wildly. It’s not taking who I am with it, scorching out my heart, making me black and cold. That’s how I’ve been since Jasper, only empty wastes inside my heart, where nothing grows and everything is ice. And I cannot thank you enough, nor repay you for how you have begun to warm me again. I can only give you a part of myself in turn, and hope it is enough. It is an unworthy offering, but it is all I have.”

Then Ezra kissed the corner of his mouth, settled his head back down against Emmerich’s shoulder, and lay still against him except for his breathing. And Emmerich was only glad Ezra had not kissed his cheek, for he would have found a wetness there that Emmerich did not want to explain. 

#

In the morning, when they awoke side by side in the bed with early greyish light hazy about them, Emmerich rolled over and kissed Ezra slow and deep and lingering—the only answer he could give for what Ezra had spoken to him in the night.

_It is enough_ , he thought, as Ezra made soft noises and smiled against his mouth, tangling his fingers in Emmerich’s sleep-matted hair. _It is more than enough; it is more than I ever dared to ask for from anyone. All I want is you by my side, and here you are. Never leave me, and I will be content with that for all of my life._

When they finally parted, Ezra was prettily flushed and roused, as was Emmerich himself. He did not mind at all to take the boy in hand and please him, and Ezra was eager to do the same in turn. They were both quick to finish, and afterwards Ezra sighed contentedly and settled back into the pillows, the sheet tangled about his legs. Emmerich sat up, turned his own legs off the edge of the bed, ran the fingers of his clean hand through his hair to smooth it down.

“Shall we find some breakfast?” Ezra offered from where he reclined in the pillows, tossing his own ruffled and damp hair back from his face. “Or perhaps you ought to find it, and bring it back. I’m afraid I may move slowly and with quite a telling gait this morning.” He grinned then, mischievous but with his eyes downcast in a nearly shy manner, and Emmerich could only draw him close and kiss him soundly for it. He would have liked nothing more than to slip back into the bed and join with Ezra again, to taste his skin and feel the heat and sweetness of him, to learn all his desires and wants one by one and give them to him as well as he could. But he had begotten of an idea late in the night, in the time that he had lain awake after Ezra’s private confession to him, and meant to follow it through this morning.

So he broke from Ezra and rose from the bed, naked and unmindful of it, except for the way Ezra’s eyes tracked him about the room. He picked up his clothes and one boot from the floor, brought them back to the bed so he could dress at Ezra’s side. The boy touched him softly, running gentle fingers over Emmerich’s neck as he sat buttoning his shirt and pulling on his trousers. The other boot had made its way to somewhere unknown, and before launching a search for it Emmerich leaned back over his shoulder and found Ezra's mouth again, enjoying the boy's soft chuckle and the light caress of his hands down his arms.

“ _Wo ist mein Stiefel?_ ” Emmerich asked into Ezra’s mouth, and received a light nip for the inquiry.

“ _Ich weiβ nicht. Unter dem Bett?_ ”

It was indeed beneath the bed. Ezra kept himself molded warmly against Emmerich as he leant forward to search out the wayward boot and then pull it on, his cheek pressed hotly to Emmerich’s shoulder. It was so very new to Emmerich, this overt and gentle affection from another man, having someone who wanted to touch him and remain in his company even if they were not sating each other’s lust. Ezra only seemed to desire contact with him, a closeness and a familiarity that spoke of something much deeper. They had not had any proper time to speak at length after their first night together, as Ezra had been spirited away from him, but perhaps it had been fortuitous in a way. Emmerich knew he would have only voiced more of his doubts, harmed Ezra with more ill-planned words, rather than...having this. Carrying on as though they had long been lovers, comfortable together and...happy.

He was loath to tear himself away from that comforting touch, but he was trying to dress himself and leave, and his holster and coat were hung near the door. He reluctantly rose to his feet. Ezra’s arms slid from his body like a too-large shirt, and he relaxed back into the bed with a soft sigh. As Emmerich crossed the room he caught sight of the small vanity and mirror, and paused at the sight of his reflection. Even with its spots and loss of silvering, he could clearly see the blossoming bruise on the side of his face from being thrown into the ice house wall, and the thick stubble that was growing in along his jaw. He ran his hand across it, considering the razor he had brought with him from the print house.

“Oh, do keep it,” Ezra said from the bed. When Emmerich glanced to him, he had his sound arm curled about his legs and his cheek down atop his knees, watching Emmerich sideways. “It fits you well. The color, especially.”

The hair of his beard had always grown in a lighter golden-copper than the stuff that grew on his head. It was not an unappealing look for his face, and did hide some of the bruising that had formed. So Emmerich left his beard and instead crossed the room back to Ezra to lean over the bed and kiss him once more, drawing another satisfied noise from him.

“I will bring you breakfast,” Emmerich promised, when they reluctantly parted. “If you can only wait a while, as I have something to do this morning in the city proper.”

“Oh?” said Ezra, now flushed a charming pink, and leaning forward again over his knees. “You wouldn’t like my company?”

“Not for this.” Emmerich combed fingers through his hair, attempting to arrange it somewhat properly upon his head. “But I promise I will tell you of it if it bears any fruit, which it may not.”

“All right.” Ezra’s smile was agreeable, and wholly trusting. “I’ll look forward to hearing of it.”

“And what will you do with your morning?” Emmerich teased, and Ezra pinched the back of his leg in reply.

“Rest my aches,” he said. “My arm has been broken, you know, and the rest of me is somewhat worn out. Some large man lay vigorously atop me for much of the night.”

Emmerich had to kiss him again, which quickly became playful nips and bites at each other until Ezra pushed him away, laughing and saying, “go away, or you won’t leave this bed for half the day.”

As that was true, Emmerich made himself part from his lover, don his holster and coat, and quit the Thistledown entirely to head back north of the river.

#

Emmerich had never been to the Clergy Constabulary building itself, but he knew just where it was—in the heart of the city, near the Bascilican Houses and not very far from the missionary schools. Most of his prior crimes had never required him being hauled here for booking, rather warranting simple arrests on sight and being dragged off for a few nights spent shivering in the Brokens; a somber brick fortress with a cold muddy yard that was not fit for the finery of the St Redglass district and instead sat in the outskirts of neighboring Highcarriage. 

But the constabulary was in the finest part of the city, where streets were neatly cobbled and clean, buildings rose in majestic stonework and wrought iron around him, and the smell of sewers was hardly noticeable. A lingering fog still curled around the streetlamps and hitching posts, but it was late enough in the morning that the weak wintery sun had dispersed most of it. Fine fancy carriages drawn by handsome blinkered horses clopped past, as well as the motorized jerry-carts trundling along with goods bound for the Sussebury Faire market. 

The streets held few people, but those Emmerich did pass were well-dressed gentlemen and ladies—mostly gentlemen in tailored clothes hurrying on their way to work. Emmerich turned a few disapproving heads, but ignored them. A missionary crew in full regalia passed by him, three women and four men in clean lines of black and white. The tall dark woman in front with the broadsword strapped to her back threw him a curious glance, as did the man at her side wearing the bright silver brooch marking him as their captain.

Emmerich knew he looked a sight here in his dirtied and bloodied coat, unshaven and wearing clothes that had not been cleaned for a week, and perhaps he would have once felt like a speck of grime among the pristine streets and buildings and citizens of St Redglass. But if he had learned anything truly from his time with Ezra, it was that equality was not in appearance, but in heart. He was no better or worse than most of the people here, even if they were clad in fineries and held respectable occupations and did not lay with those who shared the same parts between their legs. None of that truly mattered.

Emmerich sketched a light bow towards the group, and the woman with the sword seemed to determine him both harmless and amusing by returning him a faint smile. They moved along down the street, towards the Bascilican Houses themselves, and for a moment Emmerich watched them wistfully. There would always be a part of him that yearned to be a part of that, but for so many reasons it was pure impossibility.

The constabulary itself was a monolith of intricate bluish brickwork and black window frames, wide slate-grey steps leading to an imposing set of doors, also in black, with the striking white cross painted across them. Banners of the Order flew above the entryway, rippling and snapping in the chill wind. Emmerich spent only a moment standing in the street before the steps before mounting them, moving into the colder shadow of the entryway. The handles of the door were of brass, and clunked heavily as Emmerich pulled at the one on the right and heaved it open.

He did not know if Archie would be here—Emmerich knew his patrol patterns well, but could only guess as to times when he was actually present within the constabulary. He had aimed to arrive here some minutes before Archie was due in Grand Faire, hoping that the man would indeed be here before beginning his patrol duty. 

Luck favored him. The hall within was striking and imposing both in its continuing blue stone, the far wall hung with long black banners with the white constabulary cross upon them, a deep mahogany floor that shone with fresh polish, and touches of brass in the moldings and railing of the stairs that led up to a first story at the left of the hall. At the right wall was a heavy wooden counter with a long row of bookcases behind, filled with heavy leather tomes. A doorway behind led elsewhere, and though open Emmerich could not see beyond it. Two men in constable uniform, though missing the accoutrements of patrol duty, busied themselves behind it, one attending to a short line of people clearly waiting to voice some complaint, and the other upon a rather rickety ladder retrieving a ledger from a high shelf.

Further along down the hall near the stairs, three more men in their full patrol kit spoke quietly together. Even with his back turned, Emmerich clearly recognized Archie’s straw-colored hair poking out from beneath the heavy helmet’s brim. He was only just trying to think up a way to get the man’s attention without also drawing the eyes and ears of the entire constabulary, when Archie happened to turn about, perhaps intending to head towards the doors to go on his patrol. He spotted Emmerich at once, and immediately charged across the hall to him as though he meant to run him down and bear him down to the floor. He did seize upon Emmerich’s shoulders, but only to propel him into a corner of the hall.

“ _Emmerich!”_ Archie exclaimed in a hiss, knocking his helmet askew in his exuberance to attempt to steer Emmerich somewhere out of sight. His eyes darted about the hall, as if expecting every member of the CC to suddenly come down upon them both, condemning them for their past acts together. Several other of the constables _had_ noticed Emmerich’s presence, likely because of his unkempt appearance and Archie’s less than subtle behavior, but seemed more curious than concerned about him. “What are you _doing_ he—“

“You wanted to know what I’d heard about what happened at the Prince and Rose,” Emmerich said, and Archie fell silent, mouth agape. “Well. I’ve come to tell you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [TRANSLATIONS]
> 
> “ _Mein Süsser_ " = My sweet  
>  _"Was ist los?_ ” = What's wrong?  
>  _"Scheiße"_ = shit  
>  “ _Gott._ ” = God  
> “ _Wieso?_ ” = Why?  
> “ _Du bist_ —“ = You are—  
> " _unmöglich—_ " = impossible  
> “ _Mach dir keine Sorgen._ ” = Don't worry.  
> “ _Du warst sanft. Ich hatte keine Schmerzen._ ” = You were gentle. I was in no pain.  
> “ _Wo ist mein Stiefel?_ ” = My boot?  
> “ _Ich weiβ nicht. Unter dem Bett?_ ” = I don't know. Under the bed?


	9. The Brothers

Emmerich could tell at once that Ezra and Archie were an uncomfortable match, a pair as unmixable as oil and water. He had never seen Ezra go so rigidly cold and suspicious upon encountering another person, and the way he and Archie shook hands was both reticent and unyielding. Archie seemed blithely oblivious to it at first, as was his way, but began to wither under Ezra’s hard eyes and severe demeanor. Perhaps this was a bit of the man that Kegg’s crew had all known finally showing through, the man they had both reviled and somewhat feared. The man that Emmerich considered himself to have never met.

Emmerich had brought Archie out of St Redglass and back to the Thistledown despite the other man’s protests, not wanting any others to overhear the conversation they were to have. Emmerich did not trust any men of the constabulary but Archie, and if he admitted to having knowledge of a crime he was more likely than not to be accused of it himself despite any protests to the contrary. Archie would hear him out, and then could relay the information back to the constabulary without Emmerich’s name being involved. 

On the way back across the river Emmerich had stopped to purchase the promised breakfast for Ezra in the form of a pasty, as well as one for himself. Archie declined the offer of one. Upon their entry to the brothel itself, Emmerich spotted Imogen had requested her go upstairs to fetch Ezra and deliver his breakfast, and he had appeared only a minute or so later with his half-eaten pasty in hand, looking quite put-together despite the sling on his arm. Now they were stood in the back room of the Thistledown, the one in which Emmerich had first overheard Bartho and his companions speaking of the illegal shipment of arms arriving to the close. They were alone, and were sure to be left so after Emmerich had requested to Imogen that they not be disturbed there.

Ezra had not questioned Emmerich showing up with a man of the CC in tow. Even though at the constabulary Archie had removed his telling helmet and capelet with the obvious white crosses upon them and donned Emmerich’s dingy coat instead in order to traverse through the south bank of the river that was more intolerant of a man of his occupation, the uniform beneath was still rather unmistakable. Now that they were all introduced properly, Ezra pulled Emmerich aside while Archie shed Emmerich’s coat and placed it gingerly upon the back of a chair, then stood uncomfortably in the center of the room and looked about in clear distaste. 

"You’ve had relations with him, haven’t you," Ezra said, in a tone that was marked with no jealousy, only a sort of puzzlement. After all, Archie was a Clergy Constable, quite different than the usual types of men that might have tossed a coin down for a quick rub or suck from a poor immigrant boy in a grimy back-alley.

"How did you arrive at that conclusion," said Emmerich, loathe to either deny or confirm Ezra’s words. One would be a lie, and the other simply shameful. It was also not the question Emmerich had expected upon bringing back a constable, and he was unprepared for it.

"It’s the way he looks at you," Ezra said. "When _you_ aren’t looking. It’s a look that’s quite unmistakable. One of yearning."

"He may yearn for one thing from me, but certainly not all things," Emmerich said. "We had an understanding, him and I. A business arrangement, if you would like to think of it in that way."

"I would not." Ezra sounded scandalized. He laid a hand firmly upon Emmerich’s arm, gripped him with care. "Emery…you should not either."

"And why is that?"

Ezra’s mouth quavered oddly. "Because you are not a _whore_ , Emmerich."

"He was the only one who never paid me for it," Emmerich said, and Ezra went white in the face. "And we are friends. But no, he did not ever care for me. Not in that way."

Ezra made a small sound that Emmerich heard strong disbelief in. But he could not bring himself to consider that Archie wanted from him what Ezra seemed to think, now or ever. And even if it were true, Emmerich no longer wanted such things from Archie. He had been given so very little from the other man, as he had only come to realize, and he now knew he would never return to Archie in that manner no matter what befell of his relationship with Ezra. As difficult as it was to believe, he knew now he deserved better.

Ezra’s hand suddenly came down in the small of his back, an intimate touch, and Emmerich thought that Archie must be watching them. He would have bade Ezra stop, if he had thought that he was doing so out of a misguided sense of possessiveness, of showing Archie that he had lost Emmerich’s affections—but he sensed none of that. When Emmerich glanced to Ezra, he received only a gentle smile and a light caress up to his shoulders, a warm palm spreading just below the base of his neck. And he understood, with a clarity that nearly pulled the breath from him, that the touch had very little to do with Archie at all. Ezra simply wanted to touch him, and had.

Emmerich could have kissed Ezra down against to the table right there, but managed instead to simply move his hand atop Ezra’s fingers where they rested on the whorled wood. He had not thought he could feel any more affection for this man more until this moment, and now he threatened to overflow with it. Ezra even seemed to sense it, for he wrapped his good arm around Emmerich’s shoulders, pulled him close and allowed Emmerich a long moment to collect himself in the safe warmth of Ezra’s shirtfront.

When they parted, Emmerich could not help but to favor Ezra with a gentle quick kiss. Ezra caught him, made it longer and truer. That was yet another thing that Archie had never permitted, had considered wholly improper between men, and at the edge of his vision Emmerich could see the astonishment in the constable's face at witnessing such a thing. When Archie realized Emmerich was looking, his cheeks reddened and he turned away.

"Shall we give him a show?" Ezra murmured heatedly into Emmerich’s ear, but his tone was too mirthful to take as anything but a jest.

"I believe it would stop his poor heart," Emmerich replied, nudging his forehead to Ezra’s temple, placing a soft kiss on his cheek, and then reluctantly parting from him. "Business."

"Oh," said Ezra, sighing with false bereavement. Then he continued on in a tone loud enough for Archie to certainly hear, "Yes, that. I suppose we rather should take _this_ task in hand first."

Emmerich laughed despite himself, and though he attempted to give Ezra a disapproving look, he was afraid it only appeared both smitten and amused. He was helplessly gone for this man in the whirls of passion and true affection, he knew it all too deeply, and perhaps…perhaps that was all right. Perhaps he could allow himself this, perhaps not all would end if he and Ezra remained together, remained partners, remained lovers. 

With little subtlety, Archie cleared his throat. "If you’re quite done, then."

"Yes, Archie, we shan’t go at it before your eyes quite yet," Ezra said, with a wicked grin sent Emmerich's way. Emmerich pinched him for it this time, but true annoyance would still not come.  
"Constable Livensy," Archie corrected him stiffly, and Ezra mock-bowed at him—or perhaps it was a true gentleman’s bow, Emmerich was of no position to know.

"Of course," Ezra said pleasantly. "Constable Livensy."

"If we could perhaps talk of _why_ you’ve dragged me to this...this _hovel_ ," Archie said, glancing around the dim and musty room and tightening his mouth into a disapproving line. Ezra rolled his eyes but said nothing, allowing Emmerich to answer.

"We know what happened at the Prince and Rose," Emmerich began, and felt Ezra clutch at his sleeve, behind his elbow so that Archie would not see. "As we were there."

"God’s spit," Archie said, scowling with furious intent. "I should have known."

"Well, perhaps you’ve also heard of some other recent crimes," Emmerich went on, touching a hand to Ezra’s hip to reassure him and feeling the fingers twisted into his shirt loosen slightly. "We’ve information on them as well."

"Is this a confession, Mandelbrauss?" Archie said darkly. "If so, the constabulary is by far the better—"

"My God, man, of course not!" Ezra spoke up unexpectedly, and Emmerich startled and turned to him. "We know who _was_ responsible. And we intend to tell you."

"I….see," Archie said, astonishment clear in his countenance. Emmerich could not help smiling at Ezra’s quick cottoning on to his own plan. Of course, this alignment of thought was precisely why Ezra had always said they should continue on working together, as partners and companions, and now perhaps lovers as well. Emmerich was not so opposed as he once had been. Rather, it made more sense than anything else ever had in his lifetime. It was still a risk and brought him a deep nervousness, but perhaps it was something worth the danger. Certainly there would be something inextricably missing from his life were they to part, and Emmerich had been fully truthful about never having this much fortune in his life before encountering Ezra.

"And that doesn’t interest you beyond two single words?" Ezra needled, and Emmerich touched at his elbow. "What I mean to say it, weren’t you hassling Emmerich some days ago about the perpetrators of the crime?"

"I was indeed," Archie said, his gaze turning to Emmerich. "And he swore he knew not a thing at the time."

"A man can learn new things, Constable Livensy," Ezra bared his teeth in something only vaguely resembling a smile, and more like the predatory snarl of a wolf. 

"Do you speak for yourself still, or is this your new interpreter?" Archie said, turning to Emmerich while still managing to slip in a scornful look towards Ezra.

"I have no issue with his words to you so far," replied Emmerich. "I do find it questionable that we come to a Clergy Constable with information regarding a crime and receive only a question of own character in turn."

"For the sake of heaven, you know I’ve no alternate agenda here," said Archie crossly. "I only suspect _you_ of having one."

"I should think it wouldn’t matter, as long as those who committed murder were caught," said Ezra, with a pointed smirk. Ezra did not like constables, Emmerich recalled, since as a child he had often tried to escape his lessons and been dragged home by them, so perhaps his attitude towards Archie was something he would have done with any man from the CC. And not simply because he did not like how Archie had treated Emmerich in the past.

"Well, naturally I must take an interest in any lead presented to me," Archie said gruffly. "Who are those that you believe committed the murders?"

"Johan Staard," Ezra said promptly.

"And the men under him," Emmerich finished. Clavel was dead, according to Thomme and Uxilord, and therefore no longer worth mentioning.

"Oh, right, yes, only the right-hand man to one of those murdered," Archie said. "Who now runs their crews himself—what a convenient man to pin such an act upon. There’s hardly a way to go after him, not with the number of men he has at his employ. Certainly it’s not worth pursuing over the murders of two men who were outlaws themselves."

"You’ll find those crews greatly reduced in number these days," Ezra said. "A certain ice house in Grand Faire should be investigated. Hasten Lane, I believe. Wasn’t it, Emmerich?"

"It was," Emmerich said, unclear how Ezra even knew such a thing, as he had been taken to the place in such a damaged and harried state. Perhaps he had been there before, when Kegg had still been alive. But then it surely would have been one of the places they would have checked for any traces of Staard or Clavel’s men when he and Emmerich had been trying to hunt them down.

"And how would you know this?" Archie said, then sighed and waved his hand. "No, I don’t wish to know. I’m not sure I even want to know what will be found there."

"Those crews are broken and scattered, Archie, I assure you," Emmerich said. "Many dead, many wounded. After everything, I would not give you information that would place you in any harm. Clavel is dead as well."

"Oh," Archie said slowly. "Well. That is...certainly interesting information."

"Unknown to the Constabulary, I’d wager." Ezra spoke up again, through Emmerich wished he wouldn’t. He seemed to only be antagonizing Archie out of the sheer delight of it. "And even if the victims themselves were outlaws, does the CC intend to allow _murderers_ to roam free in the streets of the north bank? Pennygrand is so very close to Grand Faire and Highcarriage, surely the local residents aren’t keen on having such a violent crime gone unsolved in their neighborhoods."

"What sort of wretched snakesman have you taken up with here, Mandelbrauss?" Archie said, but there was no vigor in it. He rather seemed to think Ezra had made a point, and sighed deeply. "The murders have been a concern in those neighborhoods. It’s no secret that it was done by those who flaunt the Order, but that it occurred in such a place as a traveler’s inn worries folk that otherwise wouldn’t have need for concern."

"Staard and his men won’t be difficult to locate, now," Ezra said, while Emmerich spent a moment wondering if Archie was truly aware that the Prince and Rose was not just a simple inn. It pretended to be so to fool the constabulary, but the deception appeared so obvious he could not imagine it being so effective. "It’s a problem with a solution that we have personally brought to you, Constable Livensy."

"We’ve no idea where these men are, and you have not provided me _that_ information," Archie said. "I can’t very well rouse an entire fleet of constables to send them half-cocked throughout the city without an idea of where to go or what they might stumble upon."

"I’m sure an institute as industrious and thorough as the Clergy Constabulary was working tirelessly to chronicle all the hideouts and warehouses used by such large and infamous crews such as the ones headed by Kegg and Allister," Ezra said, near sweetly. "And that it would be of little difficulty to send several constables to each to search for a small contingency of wounded and scattered men." He paused, and then, "or do I underestimate the efficiency and power of Order law?"

" _Ezra_ ," Emmerich mouthed harshly over Archie’s shoulder when Archie turned away to stare at Ezra. But Ezra only remained smiling, with something close to innocence in his expression. Archie’s ire, in contrast, seemed to be rising with every word from Ezra’s mouth, and yet he seemed aware that his agitated responses looked irrational against Ezra’s calm demeanor.

"I am sure the constabulary will want to look into this matter," Archie said, with an air of resignation. "I would be in the right to assume you both wish to be anonymous sources of this information?"

"Yes, Archie, thank you," Emmerich said, and Archie turned about to face him. "I would hope that our full arrangement still stands," Emmerich added, while Ezra grimaced behind Archie’s shoulder and looked away. "That you do not mention me to the Constabulary, as I will not mention the type of...indulgences we had in each other."

"And...that arrangement, in itself?" Archie said, and his quick but telling glance over Emmerich’s body ensured that Emmerich would not misunderstand.

Emmerich shook his head. "That is over now. I’ve a proper lover. You’ve long had a wife. There should be no _need_ for that arrangement."

"Yes…" Archie spoke slowly. "No need. Of course."

Ezra’s eyes had returned to meet Emmerich’s now, bright and intent from behind Archie’s shoulder. Emmerich only hoped he had not given Ezra more cause to goad Archie by ending that aspect of their association, but Ezra said nothing of it.  
"Well, then, gentlemen," Archie said, glancing back and forth between them both. "If this is all you intended to speak to me about, I believe our business here is concluded." He looked especially eager to depart this building, and had since he arrived. But Emmerich noticed a small cluster of women watching them curiously from around the front of the stair, and no doubt that was unsettling the constable even further. His dress was unmistakable, and men of the CC did not come this far south of the river. Those who did were often found floundering in the river sludge or slink back across Moxmill bridge with their uniforms pelted with mud and rotted food and other unsavory matter. They were not welcome, and no one knew it better than the constables themselves.

"Concluded, indeed," Ezra said, and held out his hand in a perfectly polite gesture that Archie could not reject. Emmerich watched the handshake with some amusement, though he still felt some aggravation for Ezra and some pity for Archie. "I do hope the constabulary does manage to track down these unsavory characters, for the safety of the city."

"If it’s deemed worthy of taking action with," Archie said, but the tone of his voice had a tenacity to it that Emmerich found reassuring. Archie was not going to simply cast this off as a frivolous piece of information, whatever opinion he might have formed of Ezra. 

"Well met, Constable Livensy," Ezra said just as he dropped Archie’s hand, a fairly insufferable grin upon his face.

"And yourself," Archie replied grudgingly, and it could not possibly be sincere. Ezra however seemed to have warmed to the meeting quite a lot, delighting in how he could aggravate Archie in the most effective ways possible.

"You’ll tell us of any developments that may arise, then," Emmerich said, and Archie gave a curt nod.

"I shall." He turned about to leave the room, adjusting his collar at his neck as he did so. Emmerich almost inquired if he wished the use of Emmerich’s coat again to traverse his way back to the north bank, but doubted Archie would accept the offer. The women crowding at the stair had disappeared now, but Emmerich could still see the false confidence set in Archie’s shoulders as he move through the entryway. He paused at the door and glanced back.

"That beard, Mandelbrauss," he said, looking Emmerich over once more. "Strange on you."

"He can't grow one of his own," Emmerich muttered to Ezra, who laughed and turned away when Archie turned a sharp eye on him.

"Good day, Constable," Ezra called out then, loud enough that anyone nearby within the building would be likely to hear. Archie immediately flushed a dull red and shoved out into the street, full now of a misting rain. They watched him pass by the grimy windows, hunkered against the weather and casting his head suspiciously about him as he darted quickly down the street.

Emmerich turned to Ezra then, and fully expected the wide and handsome grin that was upon the other man’s face. 

"‘A proper lover’," Ezra said, moving closer with a brightness in his eyes. "I like the sound of that very much. And I like to hear that you won’t be allowing that man to mistreat you as he has."

Emmerich took Ezra by the hand, picked up his coat in the other. "Upstairs, for a moment, if we could."

"Naturally," replied Ezra, and the expression on his face told Emmerich that he perhaps expected to be flung down on a bed and stripped of his own clothing, or perhaps kissed for a very long time. Even if any of that occurred, Emmerich had something else in mind to take care of beforehand.

They retreated upstairs to their attic room, Emmerich leading the way. When they were alone in side with the door shut behind them, he took Ezra by the sides of his face, both drenched in fondness and frustration for his lover, cradling him and yet with some strong urge to shake the brazenness from him.

"You are such... _ein Halunke_ ," Emmerich said, at a lost for proper words not in his own tongue. "Ein kleiner verschmitzter Halunke. Was that necessary, to behave so to Archie?"

" _Ich weiß, bin ich._ " Ezra grinned at him. "It was effective, was it not? Constable Livensy will return to the constabulary so irritated by my words that he either needs to either live up to them or disprove them. His sort of attitude is not difficult to decipher; even I know the best way to spur him to action, to work his hardest to convince his superiors that our information is worth pursuing. It’s the way of most men who become policemen."

Ezra placed his hands on top of Emmerich’s then, drew them down so they lay against his shoulders. "Either way, it will get us what we want. The CC will begin a search for whatever scraps of Staard and his men survive, and likely find them, and they’ll discover the rest at the ice house. Seeing as so many of them died in the street I’m surprised your constable had not yet heard of the place."

"It’s not exactly his area of the city," Emmerich said. "Ezra, do you truly think that will be the end of it? That the constabulary will simply clean up what we could not finish ourselves?"

"We did well, considering we are only two men. Two men who have assets to call upon. Such as a man who owns a print house. The women of the Thistledown. A constable. If we can have the law itself rid us of Staard, why shouldn’t we? There is nothing lost in that, and it would be a truly legal method." Ezra closed his fingers more tightly about Emmerich’s own, the pale grey of his eyes searching deeply into Emmerich’s. "Emery, I know you are used to being alone, to going unnoticed and unsupported. But the greater the number of allies we have, the greater power we have and the greater reach we have."

"You talk as if we’re building an empire of our own," Emmerich said.

"And why shouldn’t we?" Ezra’s tone was light, but Emmerich heard no insincerity within it. Such a thought sobered him, and yet there was a spark of excitement in the prospect. That they could even say such a thing, and not as an unachievable fantasy, was wondrous and strange.

"Well, if we are to, I believe I know our next step in it. We’ve to meet Thomme and Uxilord at the Prince and Rose today," Emmerich reminded Ezra, who sighed good-naturedly. 

"Yes, of course. Those two were certainly a surprise, weren’t they?" He slanted a sly smile at Emmerich. 

"Indeed." Their hands were still clasped together on top of Ezra’s shoulders, and Emmerich slid them down until one of their entangled pair of fingers rested above Ezra’s heart. They would be out from the relatively privacy of the Thistledown in mere minutes, so Emmerich took the time to kiss Ezra thoroughly and carefully. There was a strange taste and smell about him; one of chemicals and sharp alcohol, and Emmerich frowned at his lover when he ended the kiss.

"Ezra, have you taken more of the ether?"

"The surgeon left me with some, in case of pain." Ezra spoke carefully, did not quite look at Emmerich. "I may have...partaken in a small amount while you were off fetching your constable."

" _Ezra_ ," Emmerich sighed. "You need your wits about you!"

"I’m fully bewitted, Emmerich, trust me," Ezra said, though he did move to cradle his injured arm in its sling. Perhaps this did explain some of Ezra’s more overt behavior when Archie had been present; he had not been in full grasp of his faculties. But he certainly was not in such a far gone state as he had been the previous day, and if he had _needed_ the medicine...

"You were truly in pain?" Emmerich touched a careful hand to the sling, though he knew it was far from the only place Ezra had been injured. He had well seen the bruises and cuts covering Ezra’s skin as he had bathed him the day before. It was simply the broken arm that was the most obvious outside of his clothes.

"Enough. It’s not the arm so much as most everything else. They left little of me untouched, dragging me across the city and throwing me down that pit. I feel as though I’ve more bruises and aches than I did yesterday. I’m not...accustomed to it," Ezra said, a faint color rising on his cheeks. "I suppose a stronger man such as yourself would not need such bolstering."

"You’re far more than strong enough," Emmerich told him, and kissed him once more, gently. "I don’t begrudge you the medicine, if you needed it. Shall we go?"

"Hmm," Ezra agreed, and looked about the room, at his coat which hung on the back of a chair. Then, in a lower voice, "I cannot put my coat on."

So Emmerich helped to hang his own coat over Ezra’s shoulders, which was larger that Ezra’s own and more unlikely to slide off his narrow frame. Emmerich was all right going without; he had endured a large amount of cold in his life and had grown up in a colder place than this damp island country. Then together they departed the Thistledown and headed north of the river.

#

Returning to the Prince and Rose struck Emmerich as strange—they had not come this near to the place since the night all of their troubles had begun. It sat on its corner in Pennygrand, looking as it always had through a light rain that had begun to fall, as unassuming as though no murders had taken place within its doors only a little time ago. How many days has passed, Emmerich had lost count of. More than a week, and less than two. He had never been good with dates, and he knew his numbers even more poorly than his letters.

Passing into the front door was even stranger. Men sat about at tables that Emmerich had last seen overturned on the scuffle that had ensued after Allister and Kegg had been killed, women wound their way about the room in practiced ease as they served ale in less than modest clothes, strained smiles upon their faces as they checked the bottom of each emptied mug for a coin left at the bottom of it. At the stairs, one woman led a man up to the rooms on the first floor, his hand brazenly on the back of her skirt. 

Emmerich had never been comfortable with the secondary trade that the Prince and Rose did under its pretense of being a traveler’s inn and pub, but had forcibly inured himself to it after so much time spent there with Allister’s crew. He had not enjoyed time spent in any of the disguised brothels that were scattered throughout the city. But now in each of these women he saw Vena, Innogen, Miss Ingsbel, Franny and Katharine and Ruth, and in some ways Lilin and himself. They had so little choice, all of them, and he truly wished that there could be some other way. But even with all the money he and Ezra possessed, they could not buy every covey in the city a better life.

Emmerich rented them a room, while Ezra tucked himself into a shadowed corner at a table—they were both certain Ezra would be recognized by the proprietor as one of Kegg’s trusted men, which might stir up some unwanted trouble, but Emmerich had always been unnoticed and overlooked in Allister’s crew and was unlikely to be remembered. And the man did not give him even a second glance as Emmerich requested a room for the night and paid for it, with the appearance of having to nearly hand over his last coin to do so. His lack of coat and battered appearance added to his downtrodden and unfortunate look—a purposeful one, as they wanted no unwanted attention from any who might think him someone worth robbing.

Then Emmerich went up to the room alone, and waited there. Ezra would remain downstairs, waiting for Thomme and Uxilord. Emmerich forced himself to sit still at the small table near the clouded window, sharply aware of the room just across the hall. Its door had been closed when he had arrived on the first floor, occupied by someone else. Perhaps the woman and the man he had seen climbing the stairs just before. An overwhelming curiosity had overtaken him, a desire to try the handle and see if he could get a glimpse into the room within, and yet he had fought it down and passed the door by.

It was only an ordinary room, but it was where had had met Ezra for the first time, where he had last seen Allister alive and heard the last few words he had ever spoken to Emmerich, before Thomme and Uxilord had come to shove the chest beneath the bed. It was the room where he had climbed out a window on a moonless night, just after throwing a small fortune down to a boy he had barely met. The room where his life had changed, and certainly for the better. Emmerich remembered well the worn and faded rose-patterned wallpaper of the room—this room had only some repeating artful flourish beneath its stains, markings that had perhaps been purple once.

Emmerich took his new set of pepperbox pistols out and placed them on the table, to distract himself by admiring the make and detail of them. He ran his fingers down the ornate silver scrollwork of the barrels, the detail of the grips. Neither was loaded, though he had a few bullets on him and Ezra had shown him how to do so, Emmerich had never fired these pistols before and did not have a sense of them. He ought to practice with them first, and perhaps name them. Ezra’s own was the Lutreole, even the bulldog had had a name, so certainly these deserved a proper one of their own. 

When a knock in a certain pattern came at the door of the room, Emmerich holstered one pistol and put the other in the back of his trousers, and went to open the door. Only Uxilord stood outside it, and Emmerich allowed him in. He and Ezra had decided this, that they would separate the men in simple caution at first. They would evaluate individually, and if Ezra found Thomme suspicious he would not bring him upstairs. Likewise, if Emmerich found Uxilord suspect, he would not allow Ezra and Thomme inside if or when they knocked upon the door.

"I’ve no weapon," Uxilord assured him as Emmerich felt about his lanky body for one, careful of the plasters that still bound his arm, more clumsy and rough than the work of the surgeon who had set Ezra’s injury. "Your friend downstairs already made sure of that. Anyway, I ain’t to do much damage with me good arm all swaddled up like this."

"You understand our caution," Emmerich said to him, and Uxilord nodded readily.

"Oh, aye, lad. After all, last time you lads seen us we was shooting at you," he said.

"And us at you."

"Then p’raps it can be called even between us?" Uxilord suggested, and Emmerich found no argument with that. He truly did not think Thomme or Uxilord were clever enough to be deceiving or euchering them in some fashion, despite the precautions he and Ezra were taking for this meeting.They had always been the most palatable of Allister’s crew, asides.

"Sit, then," Emmerich said, nodding towards the table. There were only two chairs at it, but the window behind it had a deep enough sill at the right height for two men to sit comfortably shoulder-to-shoulder, and that was where Uxilord placed himself. Emmerich remained standing, halfway between the door and the table, watching and waiting. 

Uxilord did not carry himself like a man who had any plans to do anything unsavory at all—he glanced around the room with an unconcerned curiosity, gnawed at a loose thread dangling from his coat sleeve, hawked up a generous amount of thick green substance and spat it on the floor, then rubbed at his nose with a deep and viscous sniff. 

"Catarrhal," he told Emmerich, who only stared at him, uncomprehending of the word. "Me head’s all inflammated, they tell me."

"Ah," Emmerich said, still with very little idea of what the man was speaking of. It was clear they did not know how to speak to one another at all, now that Emmerich was no longer the quiet and unappreciated errand boy he had been for the entirety of their acquaintance. This was not even a true reverse of the former roles—before, they had worked together under Allister. Now, Uxilord and Thomme wished to be in _his_ employ. His and Ezra’s.

The knocking pattern came again after only another minute or so, and Emmerich rose to allow Thomme and Ezra through the door. Uxilord, in his opinion, meant absolutely no harm and was sincere in his stated want of a new employer. Clearly Ezra believed the same of Thomme. Emmerich met Ezra’s eyes as he followed Thomme inside the room, and there was nothing but understanding that passed wordlessly between them. Emmerich closed the door behind them, wishing there was a bolt to throw. But such a thing was rare in a place like this. 

Thomme joined Uxilord, the man who was unexpectedly his brother, in his seat at the sill. That left the chairs for himself and Ezra, which they took. Beyond the panes of the windows, the rain had begun to come in earnest now, hammering upon the glass and resonating on the roof far above them. The streets were dark and empty except for a few unfortunate souls scuttling about to find shelter. 

"Now," said Ezra, in a tone that Emmerich had never heard him use before—one that was deeper than usual and undeniably composed. "As you expressed yesterday, the two of you are seeking simple employment with us, as an alternative to your former situation."

"That’s the way of it," Uxilord said. "We’d prefer it, if ‘twere possible, of the nature o’ the work to be...how shall we say, Rufus? Less exciting."

"You mean, you’d prefer simple runners’ work. Errands, taking messages. Tasks that would not require one to be armed," said Ezra, and Uxilord nodded.

"Aye, just so. O’ course, we’re willin’ for anything, but there’s likely to be others who are better fitted to...such skills. As it were."

"The pay would be less," was Ezra’s rejoinder.

"Naturally," said Uxilord. "But what’s the use in riches if oneself can’t say alive to spend it?"

A crooked smile tugged at Ezra’s mouth. He seemed about to say something else, when a loud resounding series of thumps came at the door. It startled them all, even the stolid Thomme who reacted noticeably with a surprised grunt, but Ezra simply flicked his eyes in that direction. Perhaps his nerves were still calmed by the ether.

 _"Mein Gott, was ist jetzt los?_ " Emmerich muttered, drawing his hands down his face.

"Answer the door, Emery," Ezra said through a chuckle. "I’m certain it shan’t kill you. I’ll continue entertaining our guests here for the moment." He waved his good arm carelessly towards Thomme and Uxilord, who were now engaged in some muttered conversation of their own.

"Perhaps one of these days someone who does mean to harm us _will_ knock, precisely for the lack of our expectation," Emmerich grumbled, but he rose to his feet and did as Ezra bade. He did make certain to pull out one of his new pistols as he went, though it was not loaded. Simply having the weapon in hand gave him a certain security.

 _"Keiner ist Zuhause!"_ Emmerich spoke upon reaching the door, but he threw it open and greeted the visitor with the pistol held aloft but not aimed; pointed towards the ceiling instead.

"Oi!" The man on the other side jumped back, shielding his face with both his arms at once. Emmerich saw the dirtied reddish coat and even dirtier brown hair, and suspicious familiarity came over him. He knew this man, but from where? He associated the aspects of him, somehow, with water.

"I ain’t meaning you no harm, am I?" said the man, still cowering behind his arms and taking steps back into the hallway, boards creaking beneath his feet.

"And I am not aiming at you, am I?" Emmerich replied. "Lower your arms."

The man did so, revealing a grimy face with a hooked nose that had a deep scar nicked in one side of it. This did not make him any more or less familiar. But Emmerich knew he had seen this man before.

"Who are you?"

"M’name is Bartholomew Genter. Bartho, if you please, sir," said the man, and Emmerich faltered at being addressed so. He did not think he had ever been called _sir_ in his life. But hearing the man’s name immediately recalled to him why he knew him.

"I know you." Emmerich raised the pistol again, only distantly aware that it was unloaded still. "You were at the canals, you—" Emmerich had a sudden image take form in his mind, the shape of a man in a red coat firing an unwieldy pistol at the rooftops above, and his absence from the scene once all had calmed. "I did not think you had survived." He also remembered how this man had spoken of Ezra at the Thistledown, as a traitor, and that he knew him as being part of Kegg’s crew.

"Hit me head on the boat engine, I did," Bartho said, nodding. "Fell out the boat, ended up driftin’ down the canal unnoticed, too dazed to climb out for myself. Fair sure it kept me alive, no one shot at me at all. After I done floated in the water a while, some of them Norrbygd boys fished me out for questioning. Thought I might know about who took that crate of arms. Thought we was all working together, that you’d been guarding us three on the boat, see. Told ‘em we wasn’t, but that I recognized one of you." Bartho inclined his head into the room, clearly towards Ezra. "Told ‘em I could find you. Finally did, following them two unawares." This time, his eyes went towards Thomme and Uxilord.

Emmerich raised the pistol again, dearly wishing he had thought to load it.

"No, wait!" Bartho held up his hands. "Not like that. It’s not the guns they’re after, nor your lives. They’re Norrbygders, see."

Emmerich knew little of the place, other than it was to the north and full of snow and cold. Ezra perhaps knew more—he was the one who had recognized the markings on the guns, knew the name of some far northern fishing company whose employees sometimes made extra coin with shipping downmarket wares. He wished Ezra was here beside him now, to understand why Bartho repeating this land of origin should mean something. 

"And what is that, to us?" Emmerich said instead.

"Well, I thought...being a foreigner yourself, you’d know the hardship of coming to an Order land without no resources nor friends to fall upon," Bartho said with a shrug. "P’raps not, then."

"Wait," Emmerich said. "What, exactly, do they want from us?"

"Well, they sent me as some sort of, how’d you say, messenger of good word, a—a go-between, of sorts—" 

"Emissary?" Emmerich suggested, rather astonished that this man who had clearly lived most of his life here spoke his own tongue with less competence than Emmerich did. Ezra had several times assured him that despite his accent Emmerich had an excellent grasp of the language, but he could never be sure if Ezra was simply telling him an untrue kindness. Perhaps he had been sincere after all.

"That might be it," Bartho agreed readily. "They weren’t so sure you’d have anything to do with them, seeing the way they set upon us in the canals."

"I assume they’ve a reason for that."

"They heard about the shipment, same as me and my boys, same as you. They wanted the cargo. They’re only trying to make their way here, same as all us."

"They fired upon us," Emmerich said darkly.

"And on me s’well, but then they done and pulled me out the river. They killed my men, my friends, but it weren’t out of no ill will on their part. And we fired back at them; killed a few of them too. None of that day was personal on any account. You and your man didn’t know us from any other in the street, did you?"

"No," Emmerich admitted. "We only wanted the cargo as well."

"And it’s been heard you used those pistols to take on one of them powerful downmarket crews in the city, nearly killed half of them," Bartho said. He lowered his voice then, leaned nearer to Emmerich, bringing the stench of fish and the rookeries with him. "Also heard it was you who done killed Allister and Kegg in the first place."

"That second part isn’t the truth." Emmerich leaned back away from Bartho, voice sharp. "I know you don’t think much of Ezra, and believe he’s a traitor. But Kegg and Allister’s own men betrayed them, we only caught the blame for it. Ezra had no hand in it."

"I’ve no quarrel with the boy," Bartho said, but he sounded nervous. Emmerich became aware that he had moved to block the doorway, to loom over Bartho like a threatening storm cloud with a pistol gripped in his hand. It was only sometimes that he became aware of how large a man he was compared to some others, and that perhaps the pistol was not even necessary for intimidating others. If he simply looked threatening, he would not have to act so. Emmerich did not stand that much taller than Bartho and yet was at least twice as broad, his body strong and muscled from the years of working the close, while Bartho was rather soft and thin beneath the coat.

"Good," Emmerich said, easing back somewhat. He still kept one arm braced in the doorway, though the pistol he lowered to his side. "You understand you come at an inconvenient time. We’re currently occupied with some important business."

"Cert’nly, cert’nly," Bartho spoke hurriedly. "I only didn’t want to miss the chance to speak with you, seeing as them Norrbygd folks are so close by and all."

"Close by?"

"They’re right just down the street, ‘n’fact, at the Halved Apple."

Emmerich became of a strong mind that the Halved Apple was the same pub he and Ezra had spent some time in the day after the murders of Kegg and Allister, staying near to the Prince and Rose as the least likely place they would be searched for. It was a place far too close to them now for comfort.

"You’ve got a pack of men from Norrbygd waiting just down the street?" Emmerich said, a sharp alarm washing through him and raising the hairs upon his arms and neck.

"Two men, two women," Bartho said, nodding. "One of them lasses is a wicked shot, got some kind of long-barreled gun that can hit a mark at two hundred paces, exactly where she wants it. Make a few of those shots every minute, she can." 

Emmerich had not been aware he had been shooting at women in the fight in the canals—or, at least, he hoped the Norrbygd women had not been present there. He had no qualms about bringing armed and willing women into such a fight under their own advantage, but to shoot at any woman himself...he did not even like to shoot at men. He doubted Ezra had the same hesitations; his lover would likely shoot at everyone equally if they were doing so to him.

"I’ll have to speak with my...partner, about all this," Emmerich said, unsure of using the word but liking it well enough once it had passed his lips. Ezra was his partner, and he was Ezra’s. It was something to call each other that was not revealing of their true relationship, and yet still bound them together unmistakably. He especially wished Bartho to know that a move against Ezra, even a word of ill-intent towards him, was a move against Emmerich as well.

"I’ll go back and tell them Norrbygd folk that you’re considerin’ the offer then, shall I?" said Bartho hurriedly.

"Do so. You’ve rooms there?"

"We do."

"Then we’ll come to you if we find it worth our time."

Perhaps that was not the wisest decision, but Emmerich could think of no other and Ezra was not free to council with at the moment. They were at least aware of the Norrbygders location now, as they were of his and Ezra’s, and if their offer was sincere they would remain at the Halved Apple. If Ezra did not agree with Emmerich on what he had decided, the Norrbygders could be easy enough to avoid or...deal with in other ways, as unpleasant as that seemed to Emmerich.

Emmerich shut the door on Bartho then, and listened through it for a moment as the man’s footsteps slowly trudged away towards the stairs and began to clomp down them. Emmerich then returned to the table and regained his chair at Ezra’s side. Ezra glanced up and caught his eye with a questioning look, edged with some concern.

Emmerich gave a subtle pass of his hand, spoke _"später"_ beneath his breath, and Ezra gave him a minute nod.

"Our apologies, gentlemen," he said then, leaning upon the small table with his good arm, his shoulders straight and back set; a pose far more fit for a banking clerk or governor than a man heading a conference between criminals. "Now, we were going to speak about some possible opportunities for the two of you to find with us?"

#

Thomme and Uxilord were unexpectedly accepting to everything that Ezra said to them—Emmerich found himself mostly remaining quiet throughout the conversation, though Ezra looked to him often as though for approval or support, which he gave in subtle touches to his back or leg beneath the table. They were sitting close enough that he did not think Thomme or Uxilord could notice even if they were more sharp-eyed men. Despite Emmerich being the one who had worked with Thomme and Uxilord for the past years, Ezra was more skilled at negotiating a situation such as this, and had dealt with these men in a similar way before. As business.

But as Ezra and Emmerich did not know what they particularly planned to do next, whether they would gather a crew or strike out on their own, they could not outright promise Thomme and Uxilord work. Work was all these men wanted; steady and fairly paid, if illegal, and they were not the sort to be able to start their own downmarket business. They required orders and instructions to function, and that suited them. They were followers, which Emmerich had always believed himself to be as well. In the past weeks he had been shown otherwise, especially in these recent days.

He and Ezra were a force, something rising from the scattered ashes of what had been Kegg and Allister’s crews, men who had burned themselves in the fire they had tried to trap Emmerich and Ezra in. They had connections, allies, both legal and illegal, and knowledge that they could both use to their advantage or exploit to the detriment of others. Emmerich’s years spent in Allister’s crew, unnoticed and treated as unimportant, had served him far better than he had even thought. He had overheard things, learned things that no one had minded voicing in front of him. Several of Allister’s men, he knew, believed he could hardly speak their language.

This was why Emmerich had refused to underestimate Thomme and Uxilord at the start of this meeting, although they truly were what they appeared on the outside. Simple men with simple wants and simple skills, none of which was without use or merit. They would make good working men, the same as they had for Allister. It was now his and Ezra’s choice to make if they would need such men. But after Ezra’s earlier hinting that they could build an empire of their own, Emmerich was beginning to believe that his lover’s mind was aimed on exactly such a thing.

But if they did so, they could never allow others to know of their personal proclivities that had been called perversion by the Order, writ into the Aggrieves as unforgivable sin. Though, it was strange that of the many laws of the charter that were broken by those around them, it was this particular one which would mark both him and Ezra as the worst sinners, looked down on by even their fellow malefactors. That he could either kill a man or love one, and receive the same punishment under the law. If they were to truly make some sort of business for themselves out of this, they would rarely not be under scrutiny. As had happened to Allister and Kegg, the men who worked beneath them had perceived weakness in them, and exploited it. His and Ezra’s relationship could never be known.

Thomme and Uxilord clearly saw them as nothing more than two men working closely together, and Emmerich caught no suspicion from them as to the true nature of their relationship. But these were not the most observant of men. Others might be. He and Ezra would always have to be careful, to be wary of everyone around them, cautious of when and where they expressed their proclivities for the rest of their lives. Even if was not with each other.

But he knew, as he felt as he had always known since the day he met Ezra, that they would not be leaving each other. And if they were to truly do what they were beginning here in this room, then Emmerich ought to throw his full confidence into the matter. If he intended to put a stop to their fraternization, there had been many opportunities before now, and they had become so entangled with one another’s lives that to pull themselves apart now might nearly be impossible. It would certainly wound Ezra in a way Emmerich did not wish to. He had called the man his proper lover, aloud and before a witness. It was only fear that kept his doubts and reluctances captive and bound so tightly inside him that he could not free them. 

But he had already made his decision long ago, and it was time that he behaved as such.

Beside him, Ezra had concisely explained to Thomme and Uxilord, with far more eloquence, that they were currently speculative about their needs and if they would be inclusive to what Thomme and Uxilord had to offer as hired men. It was not how Emmerich would have thought to present their undecided future, but it was far shrewder. Words such as ‘uncertain’ or ‘unsure’ or were not ones to use when speaking to men who were accustomed to following assured and outspoken leaders who could not belay any hesitation in their actions.

"We understand that, aye," Uxilord said, while Thomme nodded thickly in agreement. Much like Emerich, he had said close to nothing during the entire conversation. "We only ask that you think of us, should you have need."

"You know of a location in which to find us already, but where might we find you if we do have want of your services?"

"27 Leftpeter Street," Uxilord said promptly. "In Dialford, across from the pub."

"Ah," said Ezra. "Yes, I know the place."

The four of them shook each other’s hands then, the business concluded. Thomme and Uxilord departed first, and Emmerich watched from the window as the two men left the Prince and Rose and dashed into shelter from the rain into the eaves across the street, then slowly made their way southward, deeper into Pennygrand. From here, he could also see the public house that he and Emmerich had spent time in the day after Kegg and Allister’s murders, though it was at enough distance through the rain that he could not read the sign above the door to see if it was indeed the Halved Apple. Reading it without such obstructions would have been difficult enough for him at best, near impossible at worst.

"Well then," came Ezra’s voice, and Emmerich turned to see him waiting patiently by the door, a hand upon the knob. "Shall we return to the Thistledown?"

Emmerich thought of Bartho and the Norrbygders just down the street, but knew he and Ezra needed to have a very involved discussion of them before acting. Thomme and Uxilord had been familiar to them both, but these folk were strangers, and ones that they had encountered before only under hostile conditions. They would need much more consideration over what to do, or even if they should do anything. Emmerich was sure Ezra would _want_ to act, it was only in which way he favored. If he would consider them a danger or an asset.

"Yes," Emmerich said. "And on the way, I’ll tell you of what the man at the door wanted."

#

"There’s no such gun as that," Ezra scoffed as they entered the front doors of the Thistledown together, a grey and murky twilight falling about them as they shook the sludge from the rain off their clothes. The rain had dried up to an irritating drizzle, but the streets remained soupy with mud and water. "That Bartho must be addled in his head to concoct such a story."

"Well, that’s what the man said," Emmerich replied as they made their way through the clouds of steam coming from the wash tubs and into the small den beyond the stairs, unoccupied as it often was. Men who came here had other things in mind than sitting about and talking. "A long pistol and hits an exact mark at two hundred paces, several times a minute."

Ezra only clucked his tongue this time and pulled a face. "He ought to have thought up a better prevarication than _that_."

"I don’t believe it was a lie that they want to join with us—work with us, for us, something of the sort. They don’t even know we’ve the money from Allister and Kegg’s deal, they seem to be mainly impressed by what happened at the canals, and the ice house." Emmerich pulled out a chair at one of the tables and sat himself in it, while Ezra lowered himself more carefully into one across from him, mindful of his arm and the other injuries hidden beneath his clothes. 

"We’re gathering quite an eager following for ourselves, aren't we?" Ezra spoke with a wicked grin and leaned forward, placing a hand on Emmerich’s knee beneath the table—far too telling in public for Emmerich’s comfort, even if the room around them was empty. Perhaps Ezra needed some reminding of why he was out on the streets in the first place. Emmerich placed his boot one of the cross-sections of the chair Ezra sat upon, and pushed both it and him back along the floor with a shriek of wood. Ezra clutched at the table to keep his balance, gave Emmerich a look of consternation and perhaps some irritance. 

Emmerich kept his voice low as he spoke. "We’re not alone and safe here like we are at the print house." It was a reminder for himself as well as Ezra.

"We’re not alone or safe anywhere," Ezra said, but he remained at the distance Emmerich had placed him. "Also, I would be surprised if there was a single soul working beneath this roof who didn’t know of the pleasure we take in each other. Do you not remember last night?"

"I remember it." Emmerich face burned at doing so. He had not cared in the passion of the moment, the loud and unmistakable noises they had pulled from each other, but now in daylight it seemed a foolhardy thing to have done.

Ezra’s face turned to one of a gentler consideration, and though it looked for a moment as though he might reach for Emmerich, he refrained. "They’ll say nothing. After all, these women break the law the same as we do, only in different ways. They would not be helping themselves to turn the CC onto us...and I hardly think they care what we do."

"There are still the patrons here," Emmerich pointed out, even though no such person was about.

"Fairly put." Ezra leaned back in his chair, the glint of his smile bright in the dim of the room. While Emmerich was fortunate enough to have all his own teeth, they were rather crooked and a few discolored. Ezra had been gifted with quite fine rows of ivory-colored teeth, one pair distinctly longer and sharper than the others to give him a more devilish look when he smiled. Emmerich also remembered the feel of those teeth dragging against his skin and sinking into his shoulders, his neck, his thighs, and shuddered with a deep and inappropriate pleasure.

"We should not even _discuss_ this in public," he hurried to say, shifting in his chair with some discomfort. "Rather, Bartho and these Norrbygd folk."

"Ah, yes. Them and the impossible gun."

"Is such a thing truly unheard of? Perhaps in Norrbygd such a thing has been invented."  
"Well, naturally there have been firearms that can shoot at long ranges for many years," Ezra said loftily. "But they’re unwieldy, they’re erratic, they don’t hit precise marks. And they take at least half a minute to reload, perhaps more. I could accept one aspect of this described gun, but not all of them at once in a single weapon. It seems a trick, to entice us out into an ambush or a fight."

"Well, they are waiting in Pennygrand at a pub," Emmerich said. "They could have set upon us at the Prince and Rose, as they knew we were there. That man Bartho’s been tracking us down at their behest. Perhaps his story has its falsities, but I think much of the tale is true. That they’re simply trying to make their way here, as we are. And that they could use whatever assistance we could give them."

"And, an alliance with them could be...beneficial?" Ezra said in a tone that belied any credence to the matter . "Why should it be, if they are so dismally desperate on their own, what advantages would they bring to us? Wouldn’t they simply be a burden to our survival?"

"Oh, Ezra. You talk as though this were some merger of businesses, not a group of living people. They do poorly here not because of some inner weakness, but because there is little else for foreigners here to do than to fail miserably in any legal and proper endeavor they attempt, and then resort to the same sort of life that both you and I found ourselves in."

"Mmh." Ezra passed a hand over his eyes. "I suppose that was something of my father talking," he conceded, a slight frown touching upon his boyish features. He glanced towards the grimy windows, alight with the greasy glow of lamps from the street. Then, "Emery. You believe this is worth considering?"

"I do."

"Then we will."

"Yes? Just like that?"

"Yes, because you say so." Ezra touched Emmerich upon the knee, and Emmerich allowed it this time. "I trust you, and I certainly owe you my life, and you have never led us astray before. You...understand people better than I do. If you say we ought to council with these northern folk, perhaps work with them...I would be a fool to object to the consideration. I do reserve my right to object later, however, should I find reason."

"Of course," Emmerich said, full up of an intense and strange ache for this man before him. "I would expect nothing else."

Ezra grinned at him then. "Then let us meet these snow-men from the north."

"And women."

"And women," Ezra acceded good-naturedly. He got to his feet and gave his hand to Emmerich, who took it. "But not tonight."

"Not tonight," Emmerich agreed. It seemed they had done quite enough for one day. Emmerich did not think he could hold any useful thoughts together in his head for much longer, nor did he have the physical will to confront a group of people who may or may not intend harm against them. If their story was true, and Bartho had relayed Emmerich’s message correctly, they would be waiting there for whenever Ezra and Emmerich chose to come to them. 

"Since you won’t allow us contact in public, I think we ought to go upstairs so that we might be allowed to touch one another as freely as possible." Ezra sidled closer to him, capturing Emmerich’s hand with both his own and looking at him with a meaning in his eyes. And then he laughed, seeing Emmerich’s expression. "I only mean to lie in bed with one another, hold each other. I couldn’t take another of last night, not with how I ache today. You were gentle, have no concern of that, it’s only everything else that pains me. I would rather take no more ether."

"Then, let’s to bed," Emmerich said, putting a hand to Ezra’s shoulder. "I would like very much to simply be in it with you, nothing else. I think that is a thing that proper lovers can do as well."

Ezra favored him with a brilliant smile, and together they took to the stairs.

#

The Halved Apple was indeed that same public house he and Ezra had sheltered in the day after Kegg and Allister’s murders, sharing game pie and carrying with them satchels full of the money from the deal gone awry. A heavy wooden sign on a post hung above the pub door, the one Emmerich had not bothered to read it before. He rarely bothered with such a tedious effort unless necessary, but as they passed beneath it and through the doors he picked out a few of the letters that he knew, and remembered with some warmth that Ezra had promised to teach him the rest.

The air inside was dim and damp, and Ezra and Emmerich stood just inside the doors and glanced about the place, which was fair crowded at this time of day. Most were eating and drinking together, though Emmerich caught sight of a few tables of gambling taking place in the furthest corners, with lookouts keeping their eyes on the door. Pennnygrand was a common patrol for constables looking to extinguish some milder sins, hence the Prince and Rose disguising its true nature as a brothel beneath the veneer of a traveler’s inn, and the Halved Apple clearly operating as a flash house. There might even be more constables about than usual, if Archie had spurred the constabulary into a search for Staard and his remaining men.

"There, in that corner," Emmerich said after he had cast his eyes about for several moments, and spotting that dingy rust-red coat of Bartho’s. The man sat at a table with four others, two men and two women like he had spoken of, all of them looking rather downtrodden and tired as they sipped at tin mugs of ale. All possessed varying shades of blond hair; one man had a beard while the other was younger and clean-shaven, and Emmerich could see only one of the women, her hair in a thick plait draped over her shoulder. The other was blocked by Bartho’s head and shoulders, as he sat with his back to the door.

Ezra stepped forward, either to see them better or to directly approach, but Emmerich did not like the obviousness of it.

"Wait." He caught Ezra by his uninjured arm. "Bartho spoke of four, and we see four with him, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more of them, spread out in this room somewhere."

"You _are_ getting better at this." Ezra grinned at him. "I wonder which of the women has our fabled gun? Perhaps they’ve stashed her elsewhere, to keep an eye and a target on us."

"I don’t see any other women in here," Emmerich said, glancing about again.

"Disguises, my good man." Ezra clapped him on the shoulder. "Always possible. So, would you like to approach them, or should I? One of us should remain here, just at first."

"I spoke with Bartho before," Emmerich said. "Perhaps it should be myself." He also still didn’t quite trust Bartho’s attitude about Ezra, not until the man had a chance to prove that he had no ill-will towards him.

"Then I’ll remain here and watch. Approach, if I find it safe enough to do so. You’ll know if I don’t."

Emmerich expected he would. "Don’t take too long with it. I won’t know what to say to them, not as well as you would. I need you."

For a moment Ezra’s expression became full of the enraptured fondness that often prefaced his intent to kiss Emmerich, and Emmerich prepared himself to hold Ezra back if he tried. But he did not, only smiled and gave Emmerich a bolstering and wholly appropriate touch to his arm. "You’ll do perfectly fine."

Emmerich nodded, clasping Ezra on the shoulder for a moment and holding firmly, though careful not to trouble any of his injuries. He knew fairly well where they were, and he had helped Ezra wash himself again this morning, which had reacquainted him with the map of his lover’s body, the brutal mountains and rivers and valleys that had been inscribed upon it by violent hands.

He left Ezra’s side then, and Ezra seemed to melt back into the shadows near the door as Emmerich moved away from him. He felt the weight of his new pistols intently, one in his holster and the other in his coat pocket. As he wound his way past tables of low-voiced roughened men, the five people at the table he was approaching seemed to become aware of his intent. First one pair of eyes settled upon him, then two, then Bartho straightened up and turned about in his chair.

"Ah, you’ve come!" he exclaimed, clearly delighted for more than one reason. His immediate look about the table suggested to Emmerich that the Norrbgyders might not have believed he had truly found the people they were looking for, or that he had convinced them to meet.

"You are man from the canals? The man that was the ice house?" said the bearded man, his voice perhaps more thickly accented than Ezra’s own and his grasp of language tenuous. Emmerich faulted him for neither—that he even spoke so well was testament to effort and fair intelligence.

"One of them," Emmerich said. He could now see the fourth of the Norrbygders, a young woman about the age of the beardless man, lodged between him and the older woman with the long braid. Between them, he wondered who was the owner of the gun Ezra had been so incredulous of.

"I told you I’d found ‘em," said Bartho, still looking eagerly about as though for some sort of accolade, although he was instead getting a rather irked look from the woman with the braid. None of them seemed to be overtly pleased with him, which endeared them to Emmerich in some small way. They had only been using Bartho to find himself and Ezra after all, and had no loyalties to him.

In a sudden unexpected burst of motion, the only empty chair to the immediate right of the older woman jerked out from the table. Emmerich could only think that she had kicked it out with her foot. Her gaze was fixed upon him, light eyes shrewd and wary. These folk did not trust him, and had no reason to, but like Thomme and Uxilord they wanted something. Something they believed he and Ezra might be able to give them. While he was not as adept at spotting weapons concealed upon a person as Ezra was, he did not believe any of them armed. Their hands were all visible upon the table, either wrapped about mugs of ale or fiddling together in clear uncertainty. None of their posture betrayed that they were conscious of a weapon hidden within their clothing.

Emmerich sat, despite being intensely unfond of putting his back to the room at large and to the door of the pub. He would never forget Allister’s words that warned of doing so, to never turn away from a door or another man. Allister himself might be alive still had he heeded his own advice. The only reason Emmerich took the seat was because he knew Ezra was there, watching and assessing, and that he would never allow any harm to come to Emmerich that he could prevent.

"I am called Emmerich," he said, as he figured giving his name was a harmless offering of confidence. "My companion is Ezra. It was us that you encountered at the canals, and any losses you suffered there were nothing we wished nor planned for. I hope this is understood between us."

The man with the thick golden beard nodded. "It is," he said. "We do not look for you for a….revenge. We look because you best us. And kill many others."

Emmerich did not feel particularly proud of what had happened at the ice house--he had done it only because he was so desperate to have Ezra back, to keep him unharmed. But if it made these folk see him and Ezra as something to admire, that at least was safer than being considered a threat.

Before any more could be said, the bearded man and older woman suddenly raised their eyes past Emmerich’s shoulder, attention fastened on something behind him. That was when a chair shrieked across the wooden floor and shoved up to the table, and Ezra dropped himself down into it. Emmerich startled, as he had not expected it, and tried to hide his uncontrolled movement inside a mimicry of a cough. Clearly Ezra had found the situation safe enough to approach and join in.

"Good day to you," Ezra said to the gathered group, with an unexpected air of conviviality. "I expect you all knew there were two of us, from your friend here." He leaned around Emmerich’s back to clap his hand upon Bartho’s shoulder, though he looked at the Norrbygd woman as he spoke.

"She does not speak much of this tongue," said the bearded man. "I speak the best here."

Ezra sent the man a cursory glance, then turned back to the woman he had first addressed.

"And where is it you’ve come from? Norrbygd, certainly, but how is it you’ve come to...reside in the Kingshore?"

"Defect from Öggwollrog Company," said the woman, with a blunt finality in an even stronger accent, though she appeared surprised Ezra had continued to speak to her. The bearded man also, but he did not seem angry nor frustrated at being ignored. "Not pay enough. Overwork. And too dangerous to smuggle other goods that make better money. So, we leave."

"We think it safest here," put in the bearded fellow. "So many others like us, from places other than this, who are not so welcome."

"Immigrants," Emmerich said, and all eyes turned to him. "We understand."

"Ah," said the man. "Yes."

"And are you still after weapons?" Ezra inquired.

"No. Have our own. Wanted cargo only to sell, for money. Apology for boat," said the woman, adding the last after a brief pause.

Ezra grinned. "Wasn’t our boat," he said, and glanced to Bartho.

"I told ya we wasn’t working together then," Bartho said.

"No one’s said we’re working together now." Ezra’s tone grew colder, though Emmerich was not sure if these people who did not know him well could tell such a thing. It occurred to Emmerich that though he himself had never met Bartho before all this, that Ezra must have crossed paths with him before. For Bartho to have had such an opinion of him as he had stated at the Thistledown, it was unlikely they had never met in person. Ezra would then also have an opinion of him.

"Ah. Yes. Well," Bartho said, and wrung thin fingers together. "We was hopin’—"

"Perhaps you could allow these people to say for themselves what they want," said Ezra, and Bartho quailed and went silent. Interestingly, this only seemed to make the four Norrbygders more intrigued by Ezra and, to some extent, Emmerich. 

"Job," said the older woman with the braid. "Living. Safe. What we want."

Ezra smiled, a true one that showed well his handsomeness. "What we all want, isn’t it," he said. "Though, if you are looking for the first two from us, we cannot guarantee the last."

"Hmm," said the woman. "Honest man."

"Perhaps in words I am," replied Ezra. The Norrbygd woman laughed, a startling loud and unexpected sound that welled from deep within her chest.

"This man, I like him," she said. "Good words." She glanced then to Emmerich. "This one, few words. Also like."

Perhaps Ezra had correctly identified her as the leader of this group, as the bearded fellow nodded as if in agreement. The young woman and man did nothing. While all four of them shared similar features and coloring, Emmerich thought that those two were perhaps related. The shape of their brows and noses were very alike. And they were equally silent. 

The bearded man suddenly gestured to the younger man and woman, and then to the older woman. "Gerbiorn and Linnea Ekdahl. Hintriika Jernborg." Then to himself, "Magnus Alfesson."

"Well met," Ezra said, without any of the mockery that he had spoken those same words to Archie with. His demeanor, as Emmerich had always noticed, changed dependant upon with whom he spoke. Archie, he had clearly not cared about impressing nor befriending. Thomme and Uxilord he had treated as men that might work under him, carrying himself with clear authority. These Norrbygders, he behaved as though they were to become friends rather than associates. Though he claimed Emmerich was the better between them at observing and understanding people, Ezra certainly knew how to adapt himself into the most apt countenance for various folk. Emmerich wondered if perhaps ignoring the bearded fellow, Magnus, who had tried to take the focus of the conversation had been Ezra’s way of testing them, to see if there would be an objection to whom Ezra had chosen to address. There had not been.

The younger man and woman, Gerbiorn and Linnea, had remained silent for this entire time, and the latter flinched when Ezra suddenly turned his attention to them.

"Do they speak?" Emmerich said, and Magnus shook his head.

"They do not know your language."

"And I, unfortunately, do not know yours. What of others? _Parlez-vous Fraçaun? Loquerisne Omane?_ " He glanced slyly at Emmerich before adding, " _Sprechen Sie Deute?_ "

Each question returned him nothing but quiet uncomprehending stares from Gerbiorn and Linnea, while Magnus shook his head. 

"Ah, well," Ezra said then. "Perhaps we can teach each other in future. That is, if you find yourselves wanting to truly ally with us."

"Ally," said Magnus curiously. "Not work?"

"You would work. But you seem to have some sort of connections of your own. You knew about the cargo coming in with the Frand."

"We watch. Listen," said Hintriika. "That is how we know."

"But you knew where and from whom to do so. Sources of information like that are valuable, and you could bring those to us. If you work with us, it would be at a higher level than some others that we employ."

"Hm." Hintriika had a glint in her eye that reminded Emmerich strongly of Ezra, one of a certain roguishness. "This, acceptable."

#

They did not spend much more time conversing with the Norrbygders, but they parted with the intention of meeting again. Ezra seemed quite bolstered by the entire conversation, and in Emmerich’s own opinion it seemed to have gone well. He found nothing unsavory about them, and they seemed a more intelligent lot than Thomme and Uxilord. Ezra’s intention of _allying_ with them seemed a very purposeful term, placed them all on a more equal ground right at the start. There truly seemed to be no resentment over the men that Ezra and Emmerich had killed at the canals, though the four of them were all that remained of those who had defected the Öggwollrog Company.

As they crossed from Pennygrand into the edges of Little Faire, where the cobblestones began to disappear into well-trodden muck, Emmerich became aware of a change in the atmosphere of the wide street they had just entered into. The general flow of the crowd moved all in one direction, at a faster pace than usual, and an excitement seemed to run through everyone that passed by them. Somewhere much further down the street, there was shouting and a general small commotion that seemed to be centered about a certain building.

"What is this about, do you think?" Emmerich said, and Ezra gave a lazy shrug. But there was a sharp interest in his eyes, and neither he nor Emmerich moved to continue on their way. Emmerich moved a few paces down the street, and Ezra came with him.

What looked like a small grouping or gang of newspaper boys nearby caught Emmerich’s eye, all clustered around together in a small huddle and speaking in excited voices over one another. Suddenly they all broke apart and rushed down the street towards the commotion happening at the far end. One of the boys dodged a costermonger’s cart and knocked into Ezra’s side, nearly sending himself sprawling across the muddy ground before Emmerich and Ezra’s feet.

"Hey, _boy!_ " Ezra snagged the child by the back of his coat with his good hand. "What’s all this about?

The boy was red-faced with excitement, and bounced upon the balls of his feet against Ezra’s restraining grip. "Just down the street, sir! The constables have surrounded a shop and are forcing men out! They found those criminals what murdered them men at the Prince and Rose. I bet they’ll hang them!"

And then the boy was off, free of Ezra’s hold and scampering down the street with the rest of the curious crowd in the streets. Above their heads, Emmerich could see the unmistakable black painted wagon of the constabulary meant to transport apprehended prisoners several blocks further down, and the bob of many white-crossed helmets about it. 

Ezra looked to Emmerich with a wild grin. "You man came through," he said.

Emmerich let out a long exhalation that trembled as it left his throat. He had expected he could trust in Archie, but there had been no certainty that the constabulary would be able to track down Staard and his remaining men, and this soon moreover. Those in the downmarket never went to those of the law to resolve any...issues that might arise between conflicting crews. It was an unspoken knowledge that such a thing was cowardly, only a weakling’s way out of a situation he could not handle. This would be one thing Emmerich and Ezra would take no claim for having a hand in, not to anyone.

"Shall we go see for ourselves?" Ezra asked then.

"No," Emmerich replied, after a moment. "I don’t need to see it. You go, if you wish."

"No." Ezra threaded his arm through Emmerich’s in a comradely manner, elbows loosely linked. "It was only if you wanted. I would rather never see that man again for the rest of my life."

"Though, we do owe him for one thing," Emmerich admitted, and Ezra looked at him in puzzlement. "Bringing us together."

Ezra chuckled. "That is true indeed. Let us go have a drink in his name, then. In tribute to his memory and his service to us."

"Oh, I do wish I could kiss you right now." Emmerich jostled his shoulder lightly into Ezra’s with fondness, but not allowing himself to meet Ezra’s eyes in concern that he might follow through with his desire.

Another laugh from Ezra, full and merry. "Then, shall we drink, or go to bed?"

"Both. In that order." He took a glance at his lover and found a boyish joy in his face, and found that in this moment he had no room in himself for anything else but perfect relief and happiness.

"Mm. Whatever you desire." Ezra’s eyes glinted with some mischief, and locked their arms more firmly together as they turned and walked away from the sounds of excitement and the strict shouting of constables down the street.

#

"I’ve been considering what you said," Ezra said, sometime after his breath and wits had both returned to him. They lay together in their bed in the attic room of the Thistledown, blankets tossed about them and the air heavy with the smell of sweat and sex. After much cajoling on Ezra’s part, Emmerich had allowed Ezra to crawl atop him and arrange himself upon his cock, whilst pinning Emmerich’s arms down firm to the bed so that he would at least cause Ezra the least amount of further injury. The deep bruises and cuts that still colored his lover brought an ache to Emmerich’s chest and stirred an anger in his that was aimless and wholly unresolvable; the men responsible were dead, or gone, or now headed to prison, and Ezra would heal in time.

"And what is it that I said?" Emmerich asked, shifting to face him more full in the bed. He knew Ezra had entered a truly serious state of conversation when his cock brushed against Ezra’s bare thigh, and Ezra took no notice of it.

"About lending money to Luca, to pay his debts," said Ezra, quite unexpectedly. "It would be far safer for him, and that print house...I feel it would be a shame to lose that as an asset and a potential disguise for...other business. We’re no longer in danger at all from those we took the money from—it truly is ours to do as we please with now. And we can set a reasonable rate for his repayment of the loan."

"Ezra, I spoke of that long ago." So long ago he could not remember when. He had been certain it was something Ezra would never bring up again, and was unsure if he should ever do so himself. After all, Luca was not even truly his friend. But he had grown much fonder of Vena, and helping one would be helping the other.

"Well, it took me that long to think properly of it. Emmerich—" Ezra turned himself over, touched his hand to the side of Emmerich’s face. "I want us to always consider each other’s words fairly and reasonably. We are equal in this. I know I rather brushed it off as foolish before, and for that I apologize. I believe you were right in suggesting it, I was...not ready to listen. And perhaps selfish."

Emmerich kissed him fiercely in response, startling Ezra into a warm laugh and then a deep moan. He felt Ezra’s eagerness rising against his own leg, but they were not quite finished conversing yet, and Emmerich pulled back from him. 

"Then this is to be our business?" he inquired. "Lending out money, calculating interest...are we to be a bank?"

"More than that." Ezra traced fingers along the side of Emmerich’s neck. "Far more than that. We could be everything."

"An empire." It was only half a question, and Ezra gave a sharp smile at the words and put his hands firmly to the sides of Emmerich’s face.

"Yes. Precisely. We have people coming to us, respecting us already for what we’ve done in this city. We have assets and allies in many forms. We know of contacts and sources of goods from our time spent with Allister and Kegg, how to obtain things that there’s a demand for in the downmarket. We have money, enough to lend out and collect interest and payments on. We have...everything we could need to become very powerful men. Perhaps even beyond the Kingshore. And there are things we could do with such power. Good things."

A certain sharp spark ran up Emmerich’s spine, an unexpected excitement at Ezra’s words. Perhaps there was too much of Ezra in him now, that such words would thrill him rather than terrify him with the fear of his ineptitude, as they would have a month ago. "Such as?"

"Such as those of the Thistledown. If we’re to employ former members of Allister’s crew and those we hardly know from Norrbygd, surely we could give our own friends more gainful employment as well. Wouldn’t it be better if Vena and Lilin and all the others there no longer had to do the sort of work they do now?"

"Yes," Emmerich breathed. "Yes, it would."

Ezra stroked his face gently. "I thought you would like that."

"You know a great many things that I like," replied Emmerich, and Ezra laughed and pressed a soft kiss to him.

"Then we are agreed?" he asked. 

Emmerich could not hold back a smile. "I suppose there is no one else I would rather try to build an illegal empire with. Nor is there anyone else I would believe capable of doing so."

"I was thinking the very same." Ezra kissed him again, deeper and slower and with far less restraint. Even still, Emmerich pulled away again, and Ezra gave a half-frustrated, half-fond breathless laugh.

"There’s something else, then?"

"We need something to call ourselves."

"Oh, yes," Ezra said, with the air of someone who had no idea what was being meant. His eyes were quite focused on Emmerich’s mouth.

"I mean, one name. A surname for us together. For business."

"And what is the reason for one name, to appear as brothers?" Ezra pulled a face when Emmerich nodded. "And that looks less strange if someone catches us in bed together."

"So, they don’t catch us. They cannot, because it would be the end of everything. But we can appear close that way, to call ourselves brothers, closer than simply friends. A constant pair…who do anything for each other."

Ezra looked at him, quite serious. "That is the truth, isn’t it. Though many already know we are not, and we hardly look alike."

"Nor do Uxilord and Thomme, yet they’ve insisted they’re true kin," said Emmerich, and Ezra laughed.

"So, do I become Ezra Mandelbrauss?" he said. "As I have no name of my own left to offer. But I hardly speak passable enough Deute for that name to seem true to me."

"You’re decent enough with it. But I was thinking something entirely new, to both of us," Emmerich said, though there was a certain strange intrigue in Ezra adopting Emmerich’s name for himself. Still, it would be better if they both took something new. A new name with their new beginning.

But little was coming to mind, and Ezra seemed just as empty of ideas. For several minutes there was only thoughtful quiet between them.

"I never thought it would be so difficult to choose a name for oneself," Ezra said at last, and laughed. "Though perhaps it’s why I didn’t try when I lost my own, never used anything cleverer than ‘Smith’."

"It should mean something," Emmerich said. "As long as we’re able to choose it ourselves, there ought to be a meaning to it."

"The Prince and Rose," said Ezra at once. "Where we met."

"Prince and Rose," Emmerich repeated, already liking the sound of the two words. Perhaps not in that order, but—

"Roseprince," Ezra said, just before Emmerich could offer the same.

Not to be completely outdone, Emmerich countered with "Rozeprince," giving the first word the sounds more suited to his home tongue. Ezra and Emmerich Rozeprince. The Rozeprince brothers. The name felt as right as anything, a warm and believable skin to slip into. 

"Perfect," Ezra said and grinned at him, a wide smile that showed very well just how young and beautiful he was. Emmerich pressed his own mouth against that smile, urging Ezra’s lips apart and savoring the warmth of his lover’s mouth. Ezra sifted his fingers through Emmerich’s hair and guided them both back down to the bed, chest to chest, and heart to heart. _Zusammen._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter; this story is done! There will be a sequel, eventually, but not for a long time. I hope everyone enjoyed the ride. :)
> 
> [TRANSLATIONS]
> 
>  _"... ein Halunke."_ = ...a rascal.  
>  _"Ein kleiner verschmitzter Halunke._ = A little mischievous rascal.  
>  _"Ich weiß, bin ich."_ = I know I am.  
>  _"Mein Gott, was ist jetzt los?"_ = My god, what is it now?  
>  _"Keiner ist Zuhause!"_ = No one's at home!  
>  _"später"_ = later  
>  _"Parlez-vous Fraçaun? Loquerisne Omane? Sprechen Sie Deute?"_ = "Do you speak (French)? Do you speak (Latin)? Do you speak (German)?"  
>  _Zusammen._ = Together.


End file.
